St. Moritz and the Engadin property market: prices, rules and who can buy in 2026

Apartments across St. Moritz, Pontresina, Celerina and Silvaplana averaged €27,408.2 per square metre in asking price in Q3 2026, up 3.0% on Q3 2025 according to CASAFARI Area Insights (outliers excluded). This is Switzerland's dearest Alpine market—where UBS puts upscale holiday homes at about CHF 24,000/m² and luxury properties at roughly CHF 52,000/m²—in which no new second homes may be built and non-resident foreign buyers require a Lex Koller permit from Graubünden's annual quota.

Imagine a buyer arriving from London or Milan who has found an apartment above Via Serlas, likes the view down towards the lake, and assumes the negotiation will turn on the price. In St. Moritz, the first question a notary or local adviser asks is different: did the current owner buy the apartment with a Lex Koller authorisation? That single historical detail decides whether an international buyer needs a new permit from the cantonal quota at all, before a single franc is offered.

What does an apartment in St. Moritz cost in 2026?

Across the four Upper Engadin municipalities combined—St. Moritz, Pontresina, Celerina and Silvaplana—the average asking price for an apartment stood at €27,408.2/m² in Q3 2026, compared with €26,600.7/m² in Q3 2025, an increase of €807.5/m² or 3.0% year on year (CASAFARI Area Insights, queried 23 October 2026, outliers excluded).

Two methodological points matter when reading these numbers. First, the CASAFARI Area Insights figures in this guide measure asking prices from indexed public listings, not notarised transaction prices. Second, the CASAFARI series is denominated in euros to allow cross-border comparison across Europe, whereas property in Graubünden is priced and notarised in Swiss francs. You should never convert between the two without stating the exchange rate and date.

The quarterly path since Q2 2025 shows a high plateau with the statistical noise typical of a small, high-value market:

Quarter	Average asking price (€/m²)	Quarter-on-quarter note
Q2 2025	€26,669.1	First quarter of genuine series
Q3 2025	€26,600.7	−0.3%
Q4 2025	€22,890.3	−13.9% (sample shift)
Q1 2026	€26,613.4	+16.3%
Q2 2026	€28,589.1	Series peak (+7.4%)
Q3 2026	€27,408.2	−4.1% from peak (+2.8% since Q2 2025)

Because the active listing sample in these four villages is small, a single penthouse on Via Serlas or a large apartment on the Suvretta hillside entering or leaving the market can move the quarterly average by several thousand euros per square metre. Only these six quarters carry genuine apartment data in the combined feed; the method and aggregation rules are set out in the Area Insights API documentation.

Where exactly is 'the Engadin' in this guide?

In the CASAFARI data behind this guide, the Upper Engadin is defined strictly by four contiguous municipalities in the Maloja region of canton Graubünden: St. Moritz (location ID 3684177), Pontresina (1074), Celerina/Schlarigna (3684159) and Silvaplana (3684173). No single Engadin-wide location ID exists, which means neighbouring villages such as Samedan, Sils im Engadin/Segl, Zuoz and the Lower Engadin are not included in the asking-price averages.

The valley floor sits at roughly 1,800 metres above sea level along the chain of lakes of St. Moritz, Silvaplana and Sils. Skiing and summer hiking split across Corviglia directly above St. Moritz, Corvatsch above Silvaplana, and Diavolezza and the Bernina range above Pontresina. International owners reach the valley via Engadin Airport in neighbouring Samedan for business aviation, the UNESCO-listed Albula and Bernina lines of the Rhaetian Railway, or in roughly three hours by car from Zurich or Milan over the Julier and Maloja passes.

Each micro-location serves a distinct brief:

• Suvretta and Champfèr: hillside enclaves west of St. Moritz where the valley's standalone villas and largest private plots sit.
• St. Moritz Dorf and Via Serlas: apartments above the international boutiques and grand hotels, prized for walkability and lake views.
• St. Moritz Bad: on the flat by the lake and the signal cable car, offering more everyday apartments.
• Celerina: sunny, flatter terrain at the finish of the Cresta Run, favoured by families for multi-generational second homes.
• Pontresina: facing the Roseg valley and the Bernina massif, with traditional village architecture and an Italianate hospitality heritage.
• Silvaplana: directly on the kitesurfing lake at the foot of the Julier pass and the Corvatsch cable car.

Is St. Moritz more expensive than Gstaad, Verbier and Zermatt?

To compare Swiss resorts on a consistent basis in Swiss francs, the benchmark is the UBS Swiss Alpine Property Focus 2026 (published 4 June 2026, Q1 2026 data), which tracks asking prices in the upscale holiday-home segment across 35 destinations. In that ranking, Engadin/St. Moritz sits second in Switzerland at about CHF 24,000/m², having risen 7.1% over the preceding year.

Swiss Alpine destination	Upscale holiday-home price (CHF/m², Q1 2026)	Rank (UBS 2026)
Gstaad	CHF 25,200	1
Engadin / St. Moritz	CHF 24,000	2
Verbier	CHF 23,600	3
Andermatt	CHF 22,000	4
Zermatt	CHF 21,000	5

When the lens shifts from the upscale market to the ultra-prime top tier, St. Moritz overtakes every other Swiss resort. According to the UBS Luxury Property Focus 2026 (published May 2026, data as of end 2025), St. Moritz is the most expensive luxury location in Switzerland at an average of about CHF 52,000/m², with individual transactions exceeding CHF 100,000/m². Across the Swiss mountains, UBS notes that luxury property at the end of 2025 stood about 40% dearer than five years earlier, and the bank expects further mid-single-digit annual price increases.

Why does the CASAFARI average (€27,408.2/m² in Q3 2026) differ from the UBS figures? The two datasets measure different cuts of the market: CASAFARI aggregates all active apartment listings across the four municipalities in euros, while UBS models standardized upscale or luxury segments at destination level in Swiss francs. Having both allows a buyer to see the live asking-price feed alongside the institutional segment benchmark.

Apartments or a villa: what does the data say about houses?

Single-family houses and chalets are a vanishingly rare asset class in the Upper Engadin. According to the Ginesta St. Moritz market report 2021 (citing Wüest Partner and Federal Statistical Office data as of Q3 2020), St. Moritz counted about 5,606 dwellings in total, of which 64.9% were condominiums, 29.7% rental apartments, and just 5.4% single-family houses.

Because standalone villas are concentrated in Suvretta and Champfèr and often change hands discreetly off-market after long marketing periods, public listing data for houses is too sparse to compute a time series. In the CASAFARI Area Insights feed, only a single quarter carries genuine house data: Q4 2025, when house asking prices averaged €21,582.2/m² compared with €22,890.3/m² for apartments in the same quarter.

That 5.7% lower figure per square metre does not mean houses are a cheaper segment; it is a mathematical effect of very large floor areas in older villas relative to modernised apartments in Dorf. Where averages are thin, valuers and buyer's agents do not rely on a market-wide mean: they build a bespoke set of recent listings and historical comparables for the specific hillside or street using Comparables and market study for a single apartment or villa.

Can a foreign buyer purchase in St. Moritz? Lex Koller and the second-home law

Two federal statutes govern every transaction in the valley: Lex Koller determines who may buy, and the Zweitwohnungsgesetz determines what may be built and how an apartment may be used.

Under Lex Koller (the Federal Act on the Acquisition of Immovable Property in Switzerland by Foreign Non-Residents), EU/EFTA nationals who are legally resident in Switzerland and non-EU nationals holding a Swiss C settlement permit buy on the same footing as Swiss citizens. Foreign nationals resident abroad may only buy a holiday home in designated tourist municipalities, and require a formal authorisation from Graubünden's Lex Koller authority (GIHA), the Grundbuchinspektorat und Handelsregister.

Each permit is charged to an annual quota. Under BewV Annex 1, cantonal quotas (checked October 2026), the Swiss Confederation sets a national ceiling of 1,500 holiday-home authorisations a year, of which canton Graubünden receives 290. Standard conditions apply to non-resident buyers:

• Only one holiday home is permitted per family.
• Net living area is generally capped at 200 m² (and plots at 1,000 m² for houses).
• The property must be used by the owner; only occasional letting is permitted, and no Swiss residence permit is attached to the ownership.
• Crucially under current law, when a foreign non-resident buys a property from another foreign owner who already held a Lex Koller authorisation, no new permit from the quota is consumed—which explains the premium attached to resale apartments with an existing foreign-ownership chain.

Buyers in autumn 2026 must also watch live parliamentary politics. As documented by the Federal Office of Justice on the Lex Koller revision, the Federal Council ran a consultation from 15 April to 15 July 2026 on a tightening that proposes halving the national holiday-home quota from 1,500 to 750, counting foreigner-to-foreigner resales against cantonal quotas, requiring authorisation for third-country nationals buying a primary residence, and ending the exemption for listed real-estate funds. Swiss broadcaster SRF reported in October 2026 that the National Council backed the tightening in September 2026; the file goes next to the Council of States, and no entry-into-force date is set. Any non-resident buyer should have a Swiss notary verify the current statutory position before signing a reservation.

The second pillar is the Zweitwohnungsgesetz (ZWG, in force since 2016), overseen through the ARE housing inventory and second-home shares. Any municipality where second homes exceed 20% of the total housing stock is barred from approving new second homes. Because all four Upper Engadin municipalities sit above 55%, new construction is restricted to primary residences for locals (Erstwohnungen) or tourist-managed hotel-style units. What international buyers trade are pre-2012 altrechtliche dwellings—homes that existed or were approved before the March 2012 popular vote and remain freely usable as second homes.

Who is buying, and why does supply never grow?

The buyer pool in the Upper Engadin rests on three pillars: wealthy Swiss families from Zurich, Zug, Basel and Ticino buying multi-generational holiday homes; northern Italian families from Milan and Lombardy, for whom the Engadin is the closest major Swiss resort and where Italian is spoken alongside German and Romansh; and German and global high-net-worth buyers focused on Suvretta, Champfèr and Via Serlas, whom UBS (May 2026) characterises as having low price sensitivity.

They meet a housing stock that is structurally locked:

• St. Moritz: 5,027 permanent residents at 31 December 2025 (provisional BFS STATPOP data, 44.8% foreign nationals). Its second-home share stood at 55.8% on the 2014 ARE list and 56.9% (3,360 second homes out of roughly 5,900 dwellings) in the February 2022 federal housing register extract cited in the BWO study of the St. Moritz housing market.
• Pontresina: a little over 2,000 residents (2024), with a second-home share of 57.5% on the 2014 ARE list and 58% in 2024 according to swissinfo on housing for locals in Graubünden.
• Celerina: 71.1% second homes on the 2014 ARE list.
• Silvaplana: 73.2% on the 2014 ARE list, remaining constantly between 72% and 74% through 2021, with a local vacancy rate of just 0.4% in 2021—about 10 empty units out of 2,504 dwellings (Regio Maloja Monitor II).

Tourism and local employment intensify the squeeze: the Upper Engadin recorded more than 1.6 million hotel overnight stays in 2019 (about 80% in the core spanning Silvaplana, St. Moritz, Celerina, Samedan and Pontresina, per the Ginesta 2021 report), while the Wirtschaftsforum Graubünden estimated in 2024 that about 2,500 dwellings for locals are missing across Graubünden's mountain regions. Municipalities are building ring-fenced primary housing and debating tighter rules against converting altrechtliche primary homes into holiday apartments. For a second-home owner, that creates political scrutiny around conversions, but it also guarantees that the supply of unrestricted second homes cannot expand.

Pure buy-to-let investors are rare here: Lex Koller restricts letting to occasional use, and high capital values compress returns. How family offices weigh these scarcity dynamics across Europe is covered in our guide to how investors and family offices use CASAFARI data.

What does buying and owning cost in the Engadin?

In Graubünden, property transfer tax (Handänderungssteuer) is levied at municipal level. As confirmed by St. Moritz municipality on transfer tax (2026), St. Moritz charges 2% of the property's market value (ordinarily the notarised purchase price). The neighbouring municipalities of Pontresina, Celerina and Silvaplana each set their own municipal rate up to the cantonal maximum of 2%, with notary and land-registry fees added on top.

For ongoing running costs, the UBS Swiss Alpine Property Focus 2026 estimates that a CHF 1 million holiday home financed at 50% loan-to-value carries annual holding costs of roughly CHF 25,000, covering mortgage interest, maintenance and renovation provisions, property tax and the taxation of imputed rental value (Eigenmietwert). Buyers of a CHF 5 million or CHF 10 million apartment in St. Moritz should scale those fixed commitments accordingly and consult a Swiss bank early, as lenders apply stricter loan-to-value ratios to holiday homes than to primary residences.

Because property tax (Liegenschaftssteuer), municipal tax multipliers (Steuerfuss) and cantonal property capital-gains tax (Grundstückgewinnsteuer, which scales with holding period and gain) depend on the exact commune and ownership structure, buyers should have a Graubünden tax adviser calculate them before signing. For buyers funded in euros, sterling or dollars, long-term Swiss franc appreciation has also added significantly to the capital value measured in their home currency.

How to follow St. Moritz prices with CASAFARI

Whether you are advising a family office or benchmarking a single chalet, you can track the four Upper Engadin municipalities alongside CASAFARI's property market trends across Europe. In our data architecture, Location Lookup resolves place names such as St. Moritz (3684177) or Silvaplana (3684173) to their exact location IDs, Area Insights returns the quarterly asking-price series, and Comparables builds a property-level valuation dossier from active and historical listings.

Analysts and technical teams who feed Swiss and European property data directly into their own underwriting models can review the Area Insights API documentation and the Comparables and valuation API documentation, or connect an AI assistant by querying the same series through Casafari MCP. API and MCP calls are metered in tokens, and you can create an account on the CASAFARI platform to generate access tokens and test the endpoints directly.

When that buyer above Via Serlas sits down to make an offer, the sequence that protects their capital is always the same: confirm the buyer's Lex Koller status and whether the seller holds an existing permit, verify in the land register that the apartment enjoys unrestricted altrechtlich second-home status, and only then weigh the asking price per square metre against the valley's Area Insights benchmark.