The average price per m² in Morzine is 7 987 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. For a house or villa, it is 10 782 €/m². About 226 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Morzine, Aulps valley in Haute-Savoie.
The average price recorded in Morzine stands at 7 987 €/m², while the house and chalet segment comes out at 10 782 €/m². This average covers a very particular housing stock: nearly 87 % apartments according to INSEE (France's national statistics institute), spread between the village at 1 001 metres, the hamlets strung along the Dranse and the Avoriaz resort, built at 1 800 metres on the municipality's land. A studio in a 1970s residence, a recent apartment at the foot of the Pléney and an old hamlet chalet do not belong to the same market. The figures come from the DVF database (the French record of notarised property sales), which lists the transactions actually registered with notaries.
House : 10 782 €/m²
Prices from the DVF file (Demandes de valeurs foncières, published by the DGFiP), transactions actually recorded at the notary at municipality level. Cross-referenced with the Notaires de France - INSEE indices. Learn more about our methodology.
The local market is driven by visitor numbers far more than by demographics. With 2 658 permanent inhabitants and nearly 8 700 second homes according to INSEE, the municipality counts about three holiday dwellings for every inhabitant. Membership of the Portes du Soleil, a French-Swiss ski area created in 1964 that links a dozen resorts on both sides of the border, widens the clientele well beyond Haute-Savoie. The summer season, driven by mountain biking and hiking, lengthens the rental period and supports demand from buyers who let their property for part of the year.
New supply remains constrained. Building land is scarce in a steep-sided valley subject to natural hazards and to the rules of the loi Montagne, which shifts activity towards renovation, in particular the Avoriaz residences delivered from 1967 onwards and the village-centre buildings of the following decades. The modernisation of the lifts, including the replacement of the Pléney cable car by a gondola in 2013, keeps the ski area attractive. Against that, housing for seasonal and permanent workers remains a recurring issue, as competition from holiday buyers shrinks the stock available year-round.
A winter sports resort whose housing stock is almost entirely geared to holiday homes, Morzine sits above its direct neighbour Les Gets and above Le Grand-Bornand. The gap is considerably wider with a Lake Geneva town such as Thonon-les-Bains.
The name of the municipality appears as Morgenes in a papal bull of 1180. In 1253, the abbots of the Cistercian abbey of Sainte-Marie d'Aulps bought all judicial rights over the families of Morzine, which then formed a single administrative unit with Montriond. Until the 20th century, local life rested on mountain livestock farming and on slate quarrying, a notable activity from the 18th to the 20th century. The municipality became French with the annexation of Savoie in 1860. Between 1857 and 1870 it experienced the episode known as the possessed women of Morzine, a series of convulsive crises attributed to possession and later linked by medicine to conversion hysteria.
The turning point came with skiing. In 1934, Morzine had the Heckel company build a twenty-five-seat cable car linking the village to the summit of the Pléney, which peaks a little above 1 500 metres. Brought into service on 15 December 1934 and inaugurated on 12 January 1935, it was one of the very first in France, after the one in Chamonix. This installation fixed the geography of the municipality for a long time: the village grew denser at its foot, shops and hotels lined up along the valley road. The lift stayed in service for seventy-nine years, until it was dismantled in 2013 in favour of a ten-seat gondola.
The second transformation was the work of Jean Vuarnet, Olympic downhill champion in 1960 at Squaw Valley. The municipal council voted to sell the land on the Avoriaz plateau in July 1960, work on the Prodains cable car started in June 1961 and the lift was inaugurated in March 1963. The resort opened in January 1967, designed by the architects Jacques Labro, Jean-Jacques Orzoni and Jean-Marc Roque: timber cladding, sloping silhouettes and a complete ban on cars. Vuarnet was also behind the Portes du Soleil, a French-Swiss ski area created in 1964. The international fantasy film festival was held there from 1973 to 1993.
According to INSEE, Morzine has 2 658 inhabitants for 10 118 dwellings, of which only 1 253 are main residences: second homes and occasional dwellings account for 86 % of the stock. Apartments make up around 87 % of homes, a direct legacy of the Avoriaz residences and the buildings of the village centre. Among main residences, 69 % of households are owner-occupiers. Buyers are therefore overwhelmingly non-residents: French families from Geneva, Lyon or Paris, British, Dutch and Belgian buyers attached to the Portes du Soleil, owners who let their property in season. Permanent working residents, employed by the lift company, in hotels and in services, tend to look in the hamlets and the older stock.
The average price recorded is 7 987 €/m², calculated from transactions registered by notaries and published in the DVF database. It is a municipal average that brings together very different properties, from the resort studio to the hamlet chalet. Altitude, access to the slopes, the view and the condition of the property create marked gaps. The house and chalet segment comes out well above, at 10 782 €/m².
Avoriaz sits on municipal land, but at 1 800 metres and with no car access: you go up by the Prodains cable car or the road from Morzine. The stock there is almost entirely made up of apartments in developments, often built between 1967 and the 1990s, with service charges and co-ownership rules specific to a pedestrian resort. The village, at 1 001 metres, mixes old chalets, town-centre buildings and valley hamlets.
The two markets coexist but do not have the same volume. According to INSEE, apartments account for around 87 % of the municipality's dwellings, against 13 % houses. The supply of chalets is therefore narrow, concentrated in the hamlets of the Dranse valley, which lengthens searches and reduces the number of comparable price references. Apartments cover a wide range, from the Avoriaz studio to the recent home close to the Pléney.
The municipality has no railway station: the nearest rail access points are Cluses and Thonon-les-Bains, some thirty kilometres away, supplemented by shuttle buses. Geneva airport is about an hour and a quarter's drive away, which explains the weight of British and Northern European buyers. A property close to a lift departure or a free shuttle stop holds its value better, since car use is constrained in season.
The municipality falls under the loi Montagne (France's mountain-planning law), which governs the extension of built-up areas and limits building land. It is also covered by natural-hazard prevention plans for avalanches, torrential floods and landslides, to be consulted before any purchase. Letting a furnished tourist property requires a declaration at the town hall, whose local rules should be checked with the municipal services. In Avoriaz, the co-ownership rules of a car-free resort add constraints of their own.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).