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

¹ In this Act, «home» means a col­lec­tion of rooms that:

a.

is suit­able for res­id­en­tial use;

b.

forms a struc­tur­al unit;

c.

has an ac­cess either from out­side or from a com­mon area shared with oth­er homes with­in the build­ing;

d.

has cook­ing fa­cil­it­ies; and

e.

is not a move­able ob­ject.

² In this Act, «prin­cip­al home» means a home that is oc­cu­pied by at least one per­son who is per­man­ently res­id­ent in the com­mune in which the home is loc­ated in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 let­ter b of the Re­gister Har­mon­isa­tion Act of 23 June 2006³.

³ The fol­low­ing homes are deemed equi­val­ent to prin­cip­al homes:

a.

homes that are per­man­ently oc­cu­pied for com­mer­cial or edu­ca­tion­al pur­poses;

b.

homes that are per­man­ently oc­cu­pied by a private house­hold that per­man­ently oc­cu­pies an­oth­er home in the same build­ing;

c.

homes that are per­man­ently oc­cu­pied by per­sons who are not re­quired to re­gister with the res­id­ents’ re­gister of­fice, such as dip­lo­mat­ic staff or asylum seekers;

d.

homes that have been un­oc­cu­pied for no more than two years, are hab­it­able, and are ad­vert­ised for long-term rent or for sale (empty homes);

e.

homes that are used for ag­ri­cul­tur­al pur­poses but which due to the alti­tude of their loc­a­tion are not ac­cess­ible all year round for ag­ri­cul­tur­al pur­poses;

f.

homes that are used by busi­nesses for the short-term ac­com­mod­a­tion of staff;

g.

homes that are used as ser­vice ac­com­mod­a­tion for per­sons such as those work­ing in the hotel and ca­ter­ing in­dustry, in hos­pit­als and in res­id­en­tial in­sti­tu­tions;

h.

homes that are law­fully be­ing used tem­por­ar­ily for non-res­id­en­tial pur­poses.

⁴ In this Act, «second home» means a home that is neither a prin­cip­al home nor equi­val­ent to a prin­cip­al home.