A New Ski Lift linking Morzine and Avoriaz?

April 28, 2009

avoriaz apartmentsWell, it’s beyond rumour now. Or is it? It’s been talk of the town all winter. The Morzine Mairie are thinking seriously about making a direct link from Morzine centre to Avoriaz. So no more, flat linking pistes (via the Super Morzine), no more buses and more importantly no more Prodains lift.

The context of this comes from.

1. The current Prodains lift is due to be replaced, it is old, inefficient and some say it is condemned thanks to the fact it sits (just) within a rockfall zone.

2. The whole of the Prodains area need redeveloping, it is now too busy for the current infrastructure.

3. The county (Haute Savoie) has just won the opportunity to bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

4. Avoriaz is just starting a fairly major expansion and remodelling. We have some of the new apartments for sale.

These 4 facts coincide nicely to make the feasibility of a new linking lift a possibility. It gets a fairly good airing in the Morzine Town Hall yearly report. The proposed site is just by the current telephone exchange. It would allow pedestrian access from the “top level” of Morzine, so the same level as the two existing lifts and the Tourist Office, it would have a large carpark beneath it (the current “Champion” carpark), click on this map for the start location.

avoriaz apartments 2

Locally, much of this winter was spent bidding to be able to be the French nomination for the 2018 Winter Olympics. AKA Annecy 2018, a lot of effort and “millions” of euros were spent on this bid. On the 18th of March we won this nomination. This is great, it means that local, national and European funds can be called upon to help improve the local infrastructure. As far as Morzine/Avoriaz is concerned they will host the Women’s downhill event on the “Coupe de Monde” piste that finishes in Prodains.

So as far as the next steps for the Olympic bid go:

July 2009, nominations will be presented to the IOC. Then we’ll know who we are up against!

2011, the finalists of host towns will be revealed.

2012, the winner will be announced.

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Posted by Gareth

Build costs

April 27, 2009

Chalet Arnica in Samoens

Chalet Arnica in Samoens

This chalet was built by one of the Alpine Property Team – Denis Barbier – he has his own chalet building business.

Another common question answered. This should go in the “FAQ’s”!

Costs can be fairly accurately worked out on a euros/m2 rule. Our rule of thumb over the last few years has been 2200 euros/m2 (excl VAT – in French this is “Hors Tax”), now the prices are coming down – I was quoted 1850 euros/m2 recently, we won’t know if this new price is accurate until some chalets have been built! The lead time is generally April til Dec, the building period! Note added 28/April/09, We are not convinced by this new lower “benchmark”, though we would like to be! Trying to get a straight story off a tradesman is not easy, time will tell.

These figures are assuming you use local tradesmen (expensive) and a traditional method of construction, they can be reduced by using “kits” brought in from elsewhere.

So for a “typical” 5 bedroom chalet. The build cost would be between 170 x 2200 =375,000 euros plus TVA = 448,000 and 170 x 1850 = 314,000 plus TVA = 375,000

And for a 4 bedroom chalet at 120 m2 the costs would be between 315,000 and 265,000 euros.

Don’t forget the cost of the land, the stamp duty and notaires fees. For a list of the plots of land we have for sale click here.

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Posted by Gareth

Recent Price Reductions

April 20, 2009

As a follow on from the previous post, this is a list of the price reductions that Alpine Property have posted over the last 3 weeks.

Chalet La Bourgeoise, in Samoens, down by 15% to 550,000 euros.

Chalet Criou, in Samoens, down by 15% to 650,000 euros.

Apartment Biolay development in Chamonix, some prices down by 25%.

Apartment Haute Tour, a development in the centre of St Gervais, some promotional offers of 10% off.

Apartment Bas Thex, a small apartment near St Jean d’aulps, 15% down to 215,000 euros.

Apartment Le Whymper, a new apartment in Les Houches near Chamonix, down 15% to 268,000 euros.

Apartment Girolles, a small apartment next to the piste in Les Gets, down 20% to 129,500 euros.

Montagnard development in Chamonix, apartments and small chalets, various price reductions.

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Posted by Gareth

News from the last 3 weeks.

April 20, 2009

I took a few days off with the family last week to visit London. The run up to this seemed quite hectic. Now I am back at my desk and decided to take stock of the new additions that Jo and I have added to the website.

The following list is all the new properties that have gone on-line in the last 3 weeks.

Chalets (10)

Chalet Servoz, a 4 bedroom property in the Chamonix valley.

Apartment Centre Ville, a small apartment or business slap bang in the middle of Samoens.

Apartment Bertrand, a 4 bedroom apartment in St Jean d’Aulps.

Apartment Chamois d’Or, a 3 bedroom apartment in the centre of Morzine.

Moulin de Trebillon, a stables with land not far from Evian and Lac Leman.

Chalet la Griaz, 3 bedrooms in Les Houches in Chamonix valley.

Chalet Iris, 5 bedrooms, 100m from a ski lift in Chatel.

Chalet Laer, 7 bedrooms, on the ski bus route in Chatel.

Chalet Cravarin, 6 bedrooms and great views in the Samoens valley.

Chalet la Toile, 4 bedrooms and great views in St Gervais

Land (4)

Land les Bollus, walking distance from the ski lift at Vercland, Samoens.

Land at Flerier, in a quiet setting by a lake near Taninges, Samoens valley.

Land du Buissons, good views on the outskirts of Essert Romand nr Morzine.

Land at Passy, cheap! About 20 minutes from Chamonix.

Renovation (1)

Farm Grevat, a farm building and 1620 m² of land, Essert Romand near Morzine

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Posted by Gareth

200 Properties for Sale

April 9, 2009

Alpine Property is approaching its 10th anniversary, but before we reach this milestone we have recently achieved another. This week is the first time we have had 200 properties available for sale on our website. In fact by Friday we’ll be on 205.

I know 200 doesn’t sound like a lot of properties for a web based agent. It is when you consider we operate like a traditional agent. We know each individual property and for each one we visit, take the photos and arrange a contract with the owner. We do not just “re-advertise” the properties for other agents.

It sounds like a lot to me. The reason for this is that Jo and I prepare the information and pictures and put each one on line. We have worked out how long (on average) each property takes to upload. Assuming we have to create a plan for the property (a lengthy task) then the whole process takes about 5 hrs.

So it made me wonder. How many properties have we put online in total? This is fairly hard to work out before 2002. And very easy to work out since 2002 (the year we went from a “static” HTML website to a “dynamic” database driven website). Since 2002 we have advertised 716 properties.

Thanks to Alexa’s “way back machine“, we can track how many properties where online on any given month since we went online. Here is the history for Alpine Property.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.alpine-property.com

This is also an interesting place to browse if you want to see what a property might have been worth 10 years ago!

So here is the data for number of properties visible on the website (so it includes properties “under offer”).  I’ve also added initials by the year each team member joined.

Spring 2000 – www.alpine-property.com goes online with 15 properties SN/CB which overed St Jean d’Aulps, Morzine, Les Gets and the Chatel Valley – AKA The Portes du Soleil

Spring 2001 – 24 properties GJ/JN

Spring 2002 – 28 properties – website mk 2

Spring 2003 – 32 properties

Spring 2004 – 37 properties  JD helping GJ

Spring 2005 – 109 properties – website mk 3 DB/JC, adding Samoens, Chamonix, Megeve

Spring 2006 – 110 properties VM, helping DB

Spring 2007 – 112 properties LM, helping CB

Spring 2008 – 160 properties – website mk 3.5 EC/RO, adding Les Carroz, La Clusaz and Le Grand-Bornand

Spring 2009 – 220 properties

The initials stand for

  1. SN = Steve Norris
  2. CB = Claudia Buttet
  3. GJ = Gareth Jefferies
  4. JN = James Norris
  5. JD = Jo Davison
  6. DB = Denis Barbier
  7. JC = JC Skiera
  8. VL = Valérie Maes
  9. LM = Lee Massey
  10. EC = Emma Casanova
  11. RO = Richard Owens

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Posted by Gareth

Apartment For Sale Sign

April 8, 2009

Another of the “non web” marketing strategies we have been employing.

We have just taken on an apartment in the centre of Samoens and the owner has given us permission to display our “for sale” sign.

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Posted by Gareth

More Alpine Property marketing.

April 8, 2009

These two bits of editorial were missed off the last entry on “recent asds” they are  from Money Week back in December 2008.

And the following article in Le Figaro produced quite a few referalls.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/immobilier/2009/02/06/05002-20090206ARTFIG00318–quel-prix-acheter-a-la-montagne-.php

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Posted by Gareth