Federal Act
on Second Homes
(Second Homes Act, SHA)

¹ Homes sub­ject to the pre­vi­ous law are not sub­ject to any re­stric­tions on res­id­en­tial use; ex­ist­ing or fu­ture re­stric­tions on use un­der the can­ton­al or com­mun­al law are re­served.

² Such homes may be ren­ov­ated, con­ver­ted or re­built with­in the lim­its of their pre-ex­ist­ing main us­able area. If by do­ing so ad­di­tion­al homes are cre­ated, these may be au­thor­ised without any re­quire­ment to im­pose a re­stric­tion on use un­der Art­icle 7 para­graph 1, sub­ject to any oth­er re­quire­ments of fed­er­al and can­ton­al law.

³ Homes sub­ject to the pre­vi­ous law with­in build­ing zones may be ex­ten­ded by a max­im­um of 30 per cent of the main us­able area ex­ist­ing on 11 March 2012, provided no ad­di­tion­al homes are cre­ated. Out­side build­ing zones, ex­ten­sions are per­mit­ted in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions on build­ing out­side build­ing zones.

⁴ Ex­ten­sions that ex­ceed the di­men­sions men­tioned in para­graph 3 are per­mit­ted if the home is de­clared to be a prin­cip­al home as defined in Art­icle 7 para­graph 1 let­ter a or a home in­ten­ded as man­aged tour­ist ac­com­mod­a­tion as defined in Art­icle 7 para­graph 1 let­ter b in con­junc­tion with Art­icle 7 para­graph 2 let­ter a or b and the rel­ev­ant au­thor­isa­tion re­quire­ments are met. The build­ing au­thor­ity shall or­der a cor­res­pond­ing re­stric­tion on use in the build­ing per­mit and in­struct the land re­gistry to note the re­stric­tion on use in the land re­gister as soon as the build­ing per­mit be­comes leg­ally ef­fect­ive.