This instalment will focus on the Active Investor Plus (AIP) visa and the Business Investor Visa (BIV). As mentioned last time, the Start Up Visa (SUV) has been shelved and nobody is talking about it now.

There are other investment-related visa offerings via Parent Retirement Residence and the Temporary Retirement Visitor Visa, for those aged 66 and over. Sahar Shamia of our office mentions these in passing in a blog from last year. We get enquiries about these fairly regularly, and have built up some experience successfully guiding applicants through a process which is deceptively simple, but can present some challenges along the way.

As at the end of September, Immigration New Zealand had received about 950 AIP applications. The NZ$5 million Growth category is still the most popular, attracting 85% of applications so far. The US leads the market, with about a third of applicants hailing from the States; but more countries are being added to the mix as time goes on - and, presumably, as New Zealand's "golden visa" offering becomes better known internationally.

Roughly half of those who have applied have already completed their investment and been issued their first Resident Visas. INZ continues to treat the AIP as its flagship product, meaning that prompt processing is the order of the day in most cases.

If you know others who would benefit from knowing about developments as they arise, invite them to subscribe to this newsletter and to our fairly regular blog and vlog posts.

Make an online booking if you want to talk about how we could work with you.

Simon Laurent

Principal

slaurent@laurentlaw.co.nz

A few months ago, a number of investor applicants ran into difficulties with Immigration New Zealand because they used the WISE international funds transfer system to bring their money into New Zealand. The reason is that funds transfers under the AIP (for example) must come to NZ "via the banking system". WISE is not a bank, and a WISE account is not a bank account.

In some situations, funds were being moved within the WISE system from a customer's account in the home country directly to a WISE account in New Zealand. As no bank was involved, transactions were deemed invalid and some applications were at risk of being declined outright.

Anyone who is considering using WISE to bring their money to NZ can still do this. However, they must not convert the funds in Wise to NZ dollars, and then draw the funds from their local Wise account. This will be treated as a "domestic transfer". Instead, they must make the transfer from the overseas source using the SWIFT, IBAN or similar international bank transfer system, so that the payment ends up in a NZ bank account. Commentators rightly suggest that people are better off avoiding putting funds into Wise to transfer it for investment as a condition of getting a visa approved.

From September, the classes of acceptable investments for AIP was extended to allow investment in a Build to Rent scheme.

As the name suggests, Build to Rent is a development model for constructing multi-unit dwellings which are specifically designed to be tenanted, and not for the personal use of the owner. The complex is under property management who will also enforce the rules about use of the property.

Opening up this sort of development for investment is intended to advance the Government's objective of ramping up the available residential property stock. There has for many years been an identified shortage of housing which has driven up both house prices and rents. Investing the Build to Rent would contribute to improving the quality of life of the New Zealand population.