My parents purchased a chalet 17 years ago and converted the basement into 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. No structural changes were made but plumbing and underfloor heating was added.
As far as I am aware no planning or other permission was applied for at the time.
Just wondering if anyone has any experience / knowledge on what, if any applications should have been made and whether we need to rectify this before selling / renting the property.
You would need to check what the maximum Wohnfläche (i.e. warm living area) of the property is. If you have exceeded that and someone notices, they can certainly complain to the Gemeinde and I presume you will have to dismantle whatever you set up and/or pay a large fine.
I can only imagine you'll have large problems when you come to sell and you publicise your overuse of the quota. You would probably have to be careful not to include these upgrades in any literature when you came to sell, but even then you could quite conceivably have issues.
Or you might have cool neighbours and nobody cares (except the Gemeinde if they find out!).
But perhaps more important is the liability for many years of underpaid taxes since the official living area is used for tax amount. Not sure what tax consequences you face, potentially fraud, but best to consult a tax expert as well. Until this is resolved to all authorities concerned, selling it will most likely not be possible. Any buyer, bank, and notaire would recognise this as a huge red flag.
I once walked away from a nice house when I found out that a good chunk of the building was non-permitted construction. The legal headaches and potential costs meant that the property, otherwise a dream, was too problematic for me.
The Gemeinde declared that the illegal construction must be taken out. No post-sale permit was possible because the illegal construction not only exceeded the allowable m2 but also violated a local Gestaltungsplan. Which is why one might guess it was built illegally.
If the seller (heirs to the estate, all abroad and in no mood for involvement) didn't do it, the buyer would have had to take on that headache and cost. Which as you can imagine affected the saleability of the property. If you can't regularize it yourself, be prepared to take a significant hit.
All this comes with a lotta YMMV, as regs, and attitudes towards enforcement, seem to vary widely.
Perhaps local professional advice might be a good next step.
Yes taxes are paid on the rental value of the house- so in Crans, adding 2 bedrooms and a bathroom would have significantly increased the rental value, and therefore taxes due.
If I were your parents- I would go and discuss this with the Commune and fake total innocence- and get to some agreement about the unpaid tax- or it could catch them up big time at a later stage.
I very much wanted a cellar room with underfloor heating to make a games room when we built 13 years ago. I was advised it was completely against cantonal rules (ZH), but whatever I did after completion was up to me...
Are there many châlets in Pres-Celigny? Mind you, just looked at Immob there- and with houses around 3 to 6 million- a 2 bedroom and bathroom extensions would cost a bob or two!!!
Surely it varies by Canton, but it's quite common (my assumption is that it's all over the country with some differences) that they carry out quick inspections every 10 years to reasses the property value (in German it's called "Grundstück und Gebäudeschätzung", or "Amtliche Grundstückschätzung").
Was the chalet new when your parents bought it? Do you have the plans or documents from the purchase?
No one here can tell you for sure whether you have a problem or not. There are two issues. The first is the building/land use ratio. This is defined by the lot size and the percentage of living space your house is allowed to be. So it could be that when the chalet was built, not all of the allowable living space was fully used.
Was this "basement" just cellar space or did this area have proper windows, as you would want in bedrooms? If these bedrooms have just window wells, it is unlikely this space was ever intended to be "living space." If the chalet is built on a slope it could be the "basement" isn't actually below ground level.
We owned a chalet where the garage was built in such a way that it could have been converted to living space. We never did the conversion. Had we I am sure it would have required a permit and possibly changed the tax value.
Maybe you have a problem, maybe you don't. There is not enough information here to go on.