Chapter 1: Breaking the rules
When we tell people that we are building a house in the Swiss mountains to move to permanently, the initial response we usually get, either verbally or via a particularly non-subtle facial reaction, is ‘Why?’.
Our genuine answer to this brilliant question is ‘Why not?’.
We then follow up with the origin story of our decision to break life’s non-existent ‘rules’…
The Spark of an Idea
It was June 2021. I had returned home from a wonderful girls’ weekend on a Swiss lake, the latest in a series of lovely weekends spent by lakes and mountains around Switzerland, and said to my husband (let’s call him Thomas, his name), ‘I would really love to live in such a beautiful place one day’.
As we dreamed out loud of beautiful places to build a house in retirement, our curiosity had us open up the Swiss real estate site just to see. Is there land even available in such places, and at what price?
As we looked up blocks of land, we noticed that in some areas – including Graubünden – there were blocks of land with stunning alpine scenery, cheaper than almost anything we had come across in our own canton of Basel Land.
So our hypothetical search for our retirement home started to gradually morph into a real search for a potential family home.
From Dream to Reality
At this point, it still just seemed like a fun research project. Looking up blocks on Google Maps and reading the Wikipedia entries of villages we’d never heard of. But then we stumbled on a block that seemed too good to be true.
Uninterrupted mountain views in a village that wasn’t a famous tourist trap, yet still had a small tourism industry and a train station (along a UNESCO listed railway line). For the first time, we started to think beyond the block and any house that could be built upon it. We started to think about what life in such a place could look like for our family.
Could we really move to the mountains?
In addition to waking up every morning to a genuinely breathtaking view, I could continue to work from home, as I have since 2014. Thomas could continue to work in the construction industry (an industry so desperate for people that Thomas has even received cover letters & CVs from companies applying to him – seriously!). The boys, currently 2 and 6, could go to school – the Graubünden public school system is highly regarded, and there are also some excellent international schools nearby.
We could spend every weekend hiking, biking, skiing and sledding in one of the most beautiful regions in the world.
It was starting to look pretty good, so what was the catch?
Over the following weeks, we explored whether such a move would be practically possible. You know, the boring stuff like visits to the bank, discussions with the real estate agent, and discussions with the schools in the region. But even more importantly, we explored whether it would be socially and emotionally possible. Could we really choose to move to a region that most people only think to go to for holidays, away from family and friends?
Perhaps it was easier for us to make such a decision, given I had already made a similar one 12 years earlier, moving to Switzerland from Australia. Plus, we have many ex-pat friends who have also built lives far from where they grew up.
Although it would be different and arguably harder in a small alpine village, we ultimately knew it was possible to move somewhere new. We can make new friends, become part of the community, maintain connections with family and friends far away and be happy.
The Big Decision: Will we move to the mountains?
After many conversations over many glasses of wine later, we decided we had gone so far in imagining what such a life could look like, that not giving it a go was a guarantee of future regret. So we’re giving it a go!
We bought the aforementioned block of land, hired an architect and are in the process of planning our dream home.
If you’re interested in following along on this somewhat crazy journey – I will be documenting it over the coming months (likely years!) here at z’Nüni. Expect many instalments, focusing on everything from revealing the news to our family and friends to focusing more on the house build. So if you are a Grand Designs fan, buckle in and get your Kevin-isms ready!
Practical Tips
- Searching for houses & land: We conducted our searches on www.newhome.ch and www.homegate.ch
- Finding out what you can afford: Switzerland has two defined rules for calculating what people can afford to borrow (high bars that stop many/most people from ever buying):
- a) you must be able to bring a 20% deposit, at least 10% in cash (the other 10% can come from your pension fund), and
- b) the costs of carrying the loan cannot exceed 33% of your household income, when the interest rate is set at 5%.
- However, you can still find quite a range of flexibility across different banks, so it is always worth speaking to at least two or three banks to discuss what loan they would be prepared to offer you. For this project, we spoke with UBS, Raiffeisen and BLKB – and eventually went with Raiffeisen.
- Researching schools: I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find out more about schools – I simply contacted them. I reached out to three schools in Graubünden (one public and two private) and in all cases received quick and friendly replies, answering all my questions and with offers of school visits. I find that Switzerland’s reputation for not being friendly is so often proven wrong.
