File photo. The changes, in place from 1 April, remove the existing English language requirement and will allow investment in commercial property and new property developments. Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson
- The coalition is introducing a revamped investor visa in April to attract more foreign capital
- An immigration lawyer says the foreign buyer ban remains a sticking point for prospective investors
- Labour has criticised the revamped visa, saying it will only lead to more passive investments.
An immigration lawyer says overhauling the so-called golden visa is sensible, though home ownership remains a "considerable barrier" to foreign investment.
The coalition is overhauling the Active Investor Plus visa in favour of a two-pronged pathway to residence for foreigners making either higher risk or mixed investments.
The changes, in place from 1 April, remove the existing English language requirement and will allow investment in commercial property and new property developments.
Lawyer Nick Mason welcomed the revamp, having previously criticised the current scheme as too complicated and blocking potentially billions of dollars of investment.
"I think it's sensible. It's going back to broadly what we had before but with the slight tick up of the active investment stuff and increasing the investment amount to $5 million."
However, Mason said the 2018 ban on foreign home ownership would still prevent prospective investors from taking up the revamped Active Investor Plus scheme in April.
"Let's say we all have $15 million and I choose to invest that in New Zealand and I can get permanent residency. That's great, I can stay in New Zealand as long as I like but I can't own my own house until I've spent at least six months of a 12-month period there.
"People with that sort of capital, they don't necessarily spend six months anywhere and so I think that might be a considerable barrier for many investors."
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The 2018 ban on foreign home ownership remains in place as part of New Zealand First's coalition agreement with National, though Winston Peters has recently hinted he was open to foreigners purchasing property if they invest big bucks onshore.
Mason said repealing the foreign buyer ban for homes worth more than $2 million, as proposed by National on the 2023 election campaign, was "a no brainer".
"If we want these people to come establish a life here, which is the end goal, we need to let them buy a house and buy a house reasonably quickly because these people have options and I expect, given current geopolitical state, we're going to see a lot of interest out of the US and those people are going to want to make permanent shifts and not necessarily be in temporary housing while they do it."
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said she was aware buying a house was important for some investor migrants and that "discussions on that are continuing".
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the revamped visa scheme was still very competitive and would boost economic growth in the country.
"Nothing like this exists in the UK or Australia and when I think about the opportunities that this creates for people and that future investment and once they come into a market, get familiar with it, get trusted with it and actually want to spend more money and see more opportunities that's always a very good thing."
Malcolm Pacific Immigration's CEO David Cooper said the offshore market was ready for the changes and the timing "couldn't be better", given the political uncertainty around the world.
"We've got a lot of interest coming in from Germany, the United States, Japan and Korea, people who are worried about the situations in their country and they're looking for other options.
"And we're releasing this visa at a time when Australia is closed, Canada is closed, the UK is closed and many of the European golden visa programs are closing."
Labour Party's immigration spokesperson Phil Twyford was critical of the changes, saying it would only lead to more passive investment with "no benefit" to New Zealand.
"They are making it much easier for investors to just park their money in a passive investment in a property or a fund that doesn't generate any economic benefits in New Zealand and it's just really selling residents to rich foreigners."
Twyford also said it was unfair to remove the English language requirement when it remained in place for other migrants.
"There's an obvious inconsistency here. Thousands of hard working everyday migrants who come to this country to make a new life, to contribute to the economy, they still have to do the English language test.
"It's good enough for them but somehow the rich foreigners who are coming in as investors don't have to do it. Is that really the Kiwi way? I'm not sure people will feel very good about that."
Former Labour Minister now CEO of Nash Kelly Global Stuart Nash said the coalition had done a good job of fixing problems that had cropped up in the existing investor visa scheme.
"Now that I'm involved in this ecosystem and have had a good hard look at this, spoken to a lot of people who have been in a lot longer than I have, and understand what investor migrants are after, the settings are right.
"There are a couple of other settings that need to be changed but they aren't to do with immigration, they're to do with tax and the foreign buyer ban, but both those two aside in terms of the immigration settings around the visa, I actually think that the current government's got it right."
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