When the shareholders of the Braunwald ski lifts in Switzerland voted in August 2026 to end ski operations, one of the immediate concerns was not simply the loss of skiing. It was the value of the houses and apartments that had been bought partly because the lifts were there.
The reaction was understandable. Braunwald is a mountain holiday resort and many owners have substantial sums tied up in second homes. Claudio Saputelli, chief economist at UBS said that holiday properties could conceivably lose 10 or even 20 percent of their value, although he was careful to add that the eventual fall could be considerably smaller. Wüest Partner also expected owners wishing to sell in the short term to have to make concessions. Recent transaction prices had been around CHF 7,500–8,000 per square metre, while asking prices on the market were higher.
The first effect may not even be a dramatic fall in reported prices. Owners tend to remember what neighbouring properties were worth when the lifts were operating and may simply refuse lower offers. Transactions then dry up and properties sit unsold. Only later does the market establish a new price.
There is certainly evidence that skiing and property values are connected. But the idea that closing a ski area automatically removes 10 or 20 percent from every property in the village is probably too simplistic. The question is really: what exactly was the buyer paying for in the first place?
A particularly interesting study published in Climate Risk Management in 2025 examined property prices in 303 Swiss Alpine municipalities belonging to 38 ski areas between 2001 and 2019. The researchers found that property prices in ski resorts had underperformed by approximately 3.6 to 6.0 percent for each additional degree Celsius of mean winter temperature over the 18-year period. Temperature was actually a better predictor than altitude. Importantly, the same relationship was not found in comparable municipalities outside ski areas. That is strong evidence that buyers have already been attaching a value to snow reliability.
Interestingly, however, the researchers did not find a statistically significant direct relationship between changes in measured snow cover and house prices. The mechanism may therefore be indirect: warmer low-altitude resorts become less economically dynamic, ski seasons shorten, businesses struggle and buyers gradually favour more snow-secure destinations. This supports the broad UBS argument. A ski area has an economic value, and removing it should normally remove at least part of the premium attached to local property. But there is an important difference between a property losing its ski premium and a mountain village losing its value.
The former Col de l'Arzelier ski area south of Grenoble is a good example. The lifts closed permanently in 2018. Château-Bernard, the commune containing the former resort, provides a reasonably long series of French DVF property transactions. The number of transactions is very small, so the figures should not be overinterpreted. Nevertheless, there appears to have been a substantial weakening around the time of closure followed by a complete recovery. That is remarkably compatible with a short-term 10–20 percent ski-closure discount, but not with a permanent collapse in the value of the area.
The reason may be that the Col de l'Arzelier still has another economic function. It is within realistic hybrid-commuting distance of Grenoble. Driving into the city every day would be tiring and increasingly expensive, but someone working from home three days per week could plausibly live there and commute twice. A former ski station can therefore lose one type of buyer and gain another.
The type of property matters enormously. A well-built chalet or village house with mountain views, a garden, fibre internet and reasonable energy consumption remains a desirable piece of real estate after the chairlift has stopped. A poorly insulated 1970s ski studio with high copropriété charges, an F or G energy rating and a view of an abandoned lift is a much more difficult proposition. Both properties may be recorded as being in the same former ski resort, but economically they are almost different asset classes.
This distinction is especially important in France because so much ski accommodation was purpose-built during the rapid expansion of winter sports from the 1960s onwards. Many apartments were designed to solve one problem: putting four or six people next to the pistes for a week. A 20 or 25 square metre studio could make sense when the owner arrived on Saturday, skied every day and left the following Saturday. Space, insulation and year-round habitability were secondary considerations.
Remove the lifts and the shortcomings become much more important. Even a property costing only €30,000 may have annual copropriété fees, taxe foncière property taxes, insurance and significant heating costs. If it is a second residence, French owners also continue to pay taxe d'habitation. Unlike principal residences, second homes did not benefit from the abolition of the tax in 2023, and some communes can apply a surcharge of between 5 and 60 percent. The average French taxe d'habitation bill on a secondary residence was around €1,000 in 2024. The purchase price can therefore be misleadingly low.
Saint-Honoré 1500, above La Mure in Isère, is closer to the classic image of a failed ski development. The resort closed in 2004 and much of the purpose-built accommodation remains. Yet even there the property market has not gone to zero. Recent DVF data show apartment prices around €1,724/m² in 2025, although there were only five apartment sales that year. Between 2020 and 2025 the recorded average apartment price actually increased substantially, despite the absence of skiing. House statistics are similarly volatile because there are so few transactions.
That doesn't mean the closure had no effect. Small former ski apartments can still trade extremely cheaply. However Saint-Honoré illustrates another factor: accessibility. Geographically it is not especially far from Grenoble. In practical terms, however, the journey is considerably less convenient than from places such as Le Gua or the foothills of the Chartreuse. That makes it much less convincing as a hybrid-commuting location. Once a mountain residence requires almost complete remote working, the potential pool of permanent residents becomes much smaller.
Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse may be the most interesting French example of all because it was never really a purpose-built ski station. It is a genuine mountain village at around 900 metres, with hotels, shops, houses and a tourism history independent of the lifts. The ski area was nevertheless ambitious. Saint-Pierre had a surprisingly large and varied network of pistes, descending from nearly 1,800 metres almost to the village. In a snowy winter it was an excellent ski area.
But its basic weakness was obvious: the village was simply too low for such an ambitious downhill-skiing model.
That concern is not new. In January 1989, Le Monde published a remarkably prescient article on the financial problems of small French ski resorts. It singled out Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse as an example of a village that had installed excessively ambitious infrastructure, noting that a large gondola built in 1983 had seriously compromised the commune's financial position. The article warned that many small resorts were investing in expensive lifts partly to compete with larger neighbours rather than because the equipment was justified by their potential market. Nearly four decades later, the argument feels familiar.
The modern detachable six-seat Combe de l'Ours chairlift, installed in 2006, has now been sold to Val Cenis for €1.6 million. Four of the area's five major cable-based lifts have been dismantled or are being removed, although smaller ski operations remain at Les Essarts and Le Planolet and the commune has retained the possibility of bringing the La Scia chairlift back into service. The local authority explicitly attributes the change to increasingly irregular snow, shortened operating periods and a structurally loss-making ski business.
Yet the property market shows no sign of collapsing. DVF data give median house prices of roughly €2,000/m² in 2014–15, compared with €2,791/m² in 2025. Apartment prices rose from around €1,500–1,900/m² during much of the mid-2010s to €2,726/m² in 2025. There were 590 recorded transactions in the commune in the dataset, giving a considerably better sample than many tiny former ski resorts.
Another DVF analysis gives essentially the same long-term result: house prices are around 28 percent above their 2014 level and apartment prices have more than doubled.
This doesn't prove that the decline of skiing helped property prices. The post-2020 Alpine property boom clearly matters. What it does show is that the disappearance of most of Saint-Pierre's large ski infrastructure has not overwhelmed all the other reasons people might want to live there.
That distinction may be crucial. Climate change creates an odd double effect for mountain property.
UBS is already seeing this in its wider Alpine property research. Its 2026 Alpine Property Focus says holiday homes remain popular among young professionals who can work remotely, while more frequent heatwaves are increasing the appeal of Alpine retreats even as long-term snow reliability deteriorates.
That is potentially transformative. A place at 900 to 1,300 metres that struggles to provide reliable skiing may nevertheless become increasingly attractive when nearby cities endure repeated summer temperatures in the high 30s.
The property buyer of 2040 may therefore ask a very different question from the buyer of 1980.
Not:
but:
Places such as Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse and the villages around Le Gua fit this model surprisingly well. Trail running, mountain biking, hiking and cycling are not complete economic replacements for skiing. They don't necessarily generate equivalent lift-pass revenue and visitors may spend less.
But property values and lift-company turnover are not the same thing. A village can lose an economically important ski business while remaining, or even becoming an attractive place to own a house.
This is also where national differences become important. France created some of the world's most successful purpose-built ski resorts. In places such as Les Arcs, Flaine, La Plagne and Val Thorens, Accomodation was built explicitly because a lift network existed. That model is potentially vulnerable. If the skiing disappears, a 25 m² piste-side apartment can lose a large proportion of its original utility.
France has fortunately not yet provided a good example of a large, genuinely important resort closing permanently. A closure on the scale of say Valloire would be an entirely different economic event from the loss of Arzelier or Saint-Honoré and it would be unwise to extrapolate directly from the small resorts.
Switzerland and Austria have a somewhat different structure. Many resorts are also attractive towns and villages in their own right, with traditional hotels, attractive architecture and established summer tourism. Braunwald itself is still marketed by Switzerland Tourism as a car-free Alpine destination for hiking, relaxation and mountain activities independent of skiing.
Austria provides even clearer examples. Kitzbühel is simultaneously a ski resort, historic medieval town, summer hiking destination, golf centre and high-end tourist resort. Austria Tourism markets it explicitly as a year-round destination rather than simply somewhere to ski. This matters to property prices.
If the lift system accounts for only one part of the attraction of a place, the loss of skiing removes only one component of its value. It may also explain why Austrian holiday property remains expensive despite increasing climate concerns. UBS reported that prices in the Austrian Alpine destinations it follows rose by just over 3 percent in 2025 after previous declines. It also notes that Austrian markets are relatively small and that strict restrictions on new second homes constrain supply.
Scarcity, attractive traditional settlements and strong summer tourism can therefore partially insulate the property market from deterioration in skiing. A French concrete ski estate beside a collection of dismantled chairlifts may not enjoy the same protection.
This brings us back to Braunwald.
The UBS estimate of a possible 10 to 20 percent correction is perfectly credible, particularly for owners who need to sell quickly. It would also be consistent with the broader academic evidence showing climate-related underperformance in lower and warmer Swiss ski areas. Indeed, Braunwald was already one of only two Swiss destinations in UBS's 2026 survey where holiday-home prices had fallen over the previous year, suggesting that uncertainty over the ski area's future may have been influencing prices before the final closure decision.
But 20 percent should not be treated as a universal answer. Imagine two Braunwald properties.
The first may indeed lose much of its value when the lifts stop. The second still provides nearly everything it did before, except lift-served skiing.
And in an increasingly hot European climate, one of its remaining attributes, being a cool Alpine retreat, may actually become more valuable. There is therefore likely to be more divergence within former ski resorts, not simply a uniform decline.
The evidence so far suggests that the most resilient places will combine several characteristics. They will be attractive mountain settlements rather than collections of ski accommodation. They will have usable housing rather than poorly insulated studios. They will have hiking, cycling, trail running or other reasons to visit outside winter. They will have internet good enough for remote work. And, perhaps most importantly, they will be within realistic occasional commuting distance of a prosperous town or city.
Energy costs and transport costs work in the opposite direction.
A mountain chalet may be wonderfully cool in August but expensive to heat in January. A house 45 kilometres from the City may be practical when its owner drives into the office twice per week, but much less attractive if petrol reaches €2.50 or €3 per litre and the commute is daily.
The future value of low-altitude ski property may therefore be described less by a simple ski-closing discount and more by an equation:
Different former ski areas produce very different answers. Saint-Honoré 1500 looks vulnerable because the purpose-built resort property has limited alternative utility and access is relatively awkward. The Col de l'Arzelier has stronger potential because Grenoble is within hybrid-commuting range. Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse may be stronger again because the village itself was there before the modern ski industry and remains attractive without it.
Braunwald has the same advantage in a Swiss context: it does not cease to be a beautiful car-free Alpine village simply because its lifts cease running
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the relationship was straightforward: reliable skiing made mountain property more valuable. That relationship has not disappeared. The 2025 Swiss research demonstrates that markets appear already to penalise warmer ski areas. But another premium is emerging alongside it: altitude itself is becoming an amenity.
The same warming that undermines a ski area's winter business can make its summer climate increasingly attractive. Remote working makes that amenity usable for much longer periods than the traditional two-week summer holiday.
That does not rescue every ski resort. Small, energy-inefficient apartments in isolated purpose-built stations may become some of the clearest losers from climate change. But attractive mountain villages may follow a very different trajectory.
The chairlift may close. The mountain does not.