Choosing a holiday was very exciting, as there was so much choice between resorts and different chalets, so many tour operators and packages and independent offerings.  We used the Sunday papers, teletext and the telephone like weapons to find the best deal, frantically watching the prices change as the snow began to fall around the Alps.

After 10 or 15 years of memorable family holidays, we decided to buy our first place in the Alps, and spent a summer cruising around the resorts and wading through the hundreds of options available.  The first ski trip over brought a whole new dimension to the pleasures of a skiing holiday: we were now part of the village!  Now that we could come out several times during a season, we started getting to know the locals and making friends in the lift queues.  We had our favourite routes and circuits, challenging ourselves to find the best route to “Ski All the Black Runs in One Day” or “Get to the Furthest Mountain Restaurant for Lunch and Back without Missing the Last lift Home”.

As time went by and I got more involved in different outdoor sports, I discovered the Alps outside the ski season.  A whole new world of breathtaking experiences opened up to me!  I had no idea that the mountains could be so beautiful when they weren’t covered in snow!  My world changed overnight.  Now I could go hiking along mid-altitude trails in the ever-changing colours of a larch forest in autumn.  Now I could struggle up the last hundred metres of a 4000m peak at sunrise as a 360º mountain panorama opened up before my very eyes.  Now I could ride a mountain bike around the valleys and paraglide over the mountaintops.  I took up rock-climbing and via ferrata, canyoning and mountaineering, road cycling and trail running.  I spent my holidays ice-climbing, glacier-walking,  and swimming in refreshing mountain lakes.  I was mesmerised every time I saw a grazing herd of bouquetin, or a fleeting glimpse of the shy chamois.  I grew thirsty for knowledge of alpine flowers and high-altitude birds, wanting to name them all and capture them in macro photographs.  I quizzed the mountain guides on the names of the peaks, on the formations of the rocks, on the changes and developments that they’ve seen over the last decades.

I now live with my equally-mountain-mad husband in the incredible resort of La Tzoumaz, a secret well-kept from mass-marketing and tour operators, nestling on the back of  Verbier’s Mount Savoleyres and directly linked into the huge and world-renowned 4-Valleys ski area.  It doesn’t have Verbier’s night life.  It doesn’t have Verbier’s chic bars and restaurants.  It doesn’t have more than 200 residents year round, or more than 6,000 visitors in the high season.  But it does have the magic of the mountains.

We will never tire of our ever-changing view across the huge expanse of the Rhone valley, looking up to the peaks of the Haut de Cry, and over to Gstaad’s Glacier 3000, or looking down to where the clouds sometimes sit, hundreds of metres below us, with the Swiss Air Force F18s skimming over the tops.  The expanse of vineyards and fruit trees below bears testament to the long hot summers and provides a stunning multi-coloured vista from every window.

As La Toumaz is ideally situated on a T-junction of two valleys, we also have a view across to the narrow-streets of Iserables, listed on the Swiss Inventory of Heritage Sites Worthy of Protection, its public transport cable car up from the floor of the Rhone Valley, and the 4-Valleys ski lifts of Tracouet and Plan-du-Fou.

Sometimes, I sit on the balcony of our chalet and watch the Savoleyres telecabin gently bumping over the pylon as it carries another group of skiers up to the 4-Valleys, and I smile to think what has become of the summer dreams from my childhood sofa.

Click here to see our range of chalets and apartments for sale in La Tzoumaz

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Until 2012, there was a building boom in swiss mountain resorts.  High quality construction, good prices available compared to top French resorts and the opportunity to invest in a Swiss asset was attracting many buyers to Switzerland.  Then, as you’ll recall, in 2012 a referendum mandated the swiss government to write a law with the objective of limiting the percentage of second homes in any commune to 20%.  The project was described as creating more “warm beds”; beds permanently lived in or used for the tourist industry. This referendum immediately had an impact on the construction industry in tourist resorts as new building permits dried up.

The referendum text wasn’t very clear on what voters were voting for and, in the two years that followed, the committee process of the swiss government worked to reach a compromise law, with rumours of big divides between the parties.  This has had a significant impact on the market for existing properties.  No one was quite sure if an existing second home could be sold to a new owner as a second home, or if the new owner would be forced to move in, or (horror!) rent it out as a tourist property.

Finally, a draft text has had a first set of amendments from each of the two houses of parliament.  Most importantly, both houses reaffirmed the right of properties that were built before the law was passed to be sold as second homes, and both houses did this by large margins. With no new second homes being built, and property rights clarified, this is very good news for the resale property market in regions like La Tzoumaz.

The process isn’t yet 100% over, and the next parliamentary debate is not until December.  The green party is threatening to call a 2nd referendum.  To do this they would have 3 months to gather 50,000 signatures once the law has come out of parliament.  However, step by step we’re getting closer to the final law, and it’s the existing second home owners who will benefit most.

Link to Le Nouvelliste’s minute-by-minute coverage of developments

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