Season-long rent: Austria and Italy

LOTA, first of all, well done you!It is a great thing to do, one that you may repeat in years to come!

Second of all, I am the worst person to respond, since I had my several seasons in Niederau, in the days that we only ever skied in the local village. Nowadays, I buy an area pass, Allstar or Tirol.

It was made easy for me because a good friend and I drove out to Niederau for a couple of weeks, slept on the floor of a house full of ski instructors, and I was thereafter committed to both seasons and lifelong returns.

Your situation is much more difficult. Not from the accommodation point of view, that is generally easy, but from the choice of resort! Don't you have any idea where you would choose to spend a season?

Moving on, I want to introduce another train of thought, lifestyle cost. Unless you are minted, going out on the town every night for a season may be OK in Austria and Italy cost wise, but not so in France, and to some extent in Switzerland. Likewise with the mountain day cost. Eg, a lunch/drink cost variation, Austria/France could be €7/€15, ie €800 a season pp. there are other location cost variations such as season pass.

More broadly, you will need to cost in season travel/health insurance.

Coming back to your specific query, an email to your chosen location tourist board would generally provide long term rental information, or to the resort FB page, but this is only part of the cost of staying in a resort.

Go for it!

To give you an idea, we were offered CHF 10,000 for a full season's rental of our 2-bed apartment 68m2 with underground parking and access to laundry and drying a couple of years ago. It was only because we planned to use it ourselves that we declined. This would have been a good offer on both sides, as we rent for about 1100-1450 CHF/week but the only really guaranteed weeks are Christmas, New Year, Half-terms and Easter. We have reasonable internet (15Mbps) and cable TV so it would work for someone who needed to do some work as well. If you're looking, then on this basis, a budget/offer of 8x-10x the weekly rate might be reasonable. Make sure there is good wired Internet, even if it's just for Netflix or Amazon streaming. And access to BBC and ITV cable channels would be more udeful than you might think. Also, remember that agencies often take a big chunk of the up-front charge as commission, so if you can find someone renting directly, then they and you could work on a much smaller budget. This is where the local Tourist Office may prove more useful, as if our village is anything to go by, they have a number of owners on their books who don't rent via an agency e.g. the CHF 10K could be more like CHF 7K if booked direct.

Thanks for all your helpful comments. I am in the process of narrowing it down and top of the list, at present, is a really smart apartment in la Thuile (handy for La Rosiere, Courmayeur, Cervinia, Pila and Chamonix, for example), another little beauty in Kirchberg and others dotted around Austria. It has proved much easier than anticipated (AirBnB, HomeAway, Amazing Austria and Long Term Lettings.com) have proved very, very useful.

And all a lot cheaper than 10,000 CHF for the season! And definitely don't want to go to France!