Silicon Valley coined the word in 2013 for a start-up worth over a billion dollars while still private: a creature that should not exist by the ordinary arithmetic of venture capital, and yet occasionally does. The name stuck because it captured something true about scarcity everywhere, not just in tech. Rare enough, and any asset class will eventually reach for a myth to describe it.
The property industry has its own unicorn now, and it has nothing to do with valuation. Here, a unicorn is simply a new-build home that has already been delivered.
What makes this so special is that the owner gets all the advantages of a new-build property while bypassing the need to wait for delivery, and it also removes the uncertainty. In France, that means notary fees of roughly two to three per cent rather than the seven to eight per cent charged on older stock, a ten-year structural guarantee that survives any change of owner, and construction built to the RE2020 environmental standard, which keeps running costs low in a climate that punishes poor insulation. In many touristic areas of France, such as the French Alps and theFrench Riviera, there is also the opportunity to reclaim the VAT (20%) on the property purchase price if you choose to rent it out.
Portugal offers its own version of the same reassurance: a ten-year structural warranty as standard, cover on new appliances, and none of the retrofitting that older Lisbon stock so often demands. In both markets, new-build was never really about novelty. It was about certainty, and a unicorn is where that certainty finally stops being theoretical.
Les Bois Des Ours 601, Méribel, French Alps
Why unicorns are so hard to find
Logic suggests a finished, guaranteed home should be the easiest sale in either market. Most of the time, it never gets the chance to prove it: the overwhelming majority of prime new-build properties in Lisbon and the French Alps sell out before completion, reserved from drawings years ahead of delivery, which is exactly why a finished, unsold unit is rare enough to need a name at all.
While it would be reasonable to assume that any properties remaining after a project has sold are flawed - the runts the market quietly passed over - this isn't necessarily the case. Nick Leach, Partner at Athena Advisers, comments, “Sometimes unicorns are simply great properties which have been overlooked or in some cases a client may purchase a property off-plan and during the time it takes for the property to be delivered, their circumstances may have changed, leading them to sell the property without ever stepping foot in it.”
Though less common, developers have their own reasons for finishing before selling, too. "Some actually prefer to deliver a finished product," Nick adds. "It makes it simpler for them as they can control the whole process, including the interior design and layout, making it more efficient on their end.”
Sao Joao da Praça 8, Alfama, Lisbon
Who goes looking for one
"Unicorn hunters tend to prefer a delivered new-build because it feels more secure," says Marta Salgado, Athena's Portugal Sales Director. "They know there won't be issues with quality, and the developer's warranty is already in place. As in France, Portuguese new builds come with a 10-year warranty for the structure and the brand-new appliances come with a guarantee too. The difficulty is stock. Because so much selling happens at the off-plan stage, a genuinely finished unicorn isn't always easy to find."
That instinct travels well between the two markets, even if the buyers arrive at it from different directions. In the Alps, unicorn hunters tend to have watched a development stall elsewhere in the world and want to see the roof before they sign. "Clients who've had a bad off-plan experience in another country often need reassurance that France is different," says Nick. "The escrow, the insurance, the guarantees are all there. But once someone has been burned from an experience investing in another country, they'd usually rather just see the finished building."
None of this makes a unicorn a better purchase than an off-plan reservation. It makes it a different one: a promise already kept, rather than a promise still being managed, bought by someone who would rather stand in a room than imagine one. Every unicorn now standing in Val d’Isère or Lapa was, at some point, meant to be sold before it was ever finished. That it remained is not evidence of a flaw in the property. It is evidence of the oldest trick scarcity plays on any market: the rarest thing available is very often not the one built to be rare, but simply the one that refused to disappear on schedule.
