On 1 April, the new - and definitely improved - Active Investor Plus Residence policy opened. At a time when multiple other countries have suspended their "golden visa" offerings, New Zealand has struck at the right time with a simpler and more attractive scheme, and has reaped the rewards.

In just over 3 months, over 200 applications have been lodged, mostly under the NZ$5 million Growth category (see below). At the end of June, the volume of potential investment to come out of potential visa approvals stood at nearly $1 billion, according to a press release by Hon Erica Stanford, Minister of Immigration.

Much of the interest in this programme has come from the United States, and Europe, especially Germany. NZ's approach to verifying the legitimacy of applicants' sources of wealth lends itself well to these markets which have robust financial record-keeping.

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Simon Laurent

Principal

slaurent@laurentlaw.co.nz

The sheer awfulness of the Entrepreneur Work Visa and Resident Visa pathway is legendary. We, like most of our colleagues, have actively discouraged potential clients from committing vast amounts of time and money to a process which will most likely end in failure.

That may soon change. I am part of an industry consultation group providing input and advice to the Minister of Immigration. This year, we've been looking at how to revise the Entrepreneur settings to make them sensible and achievable.

At a lawyers' dinner event I attended earlier this month, the Minister disclosed that the new offering was due soon. The hope is that it will land before the end of this year.

The detail of what Entrepreneur will look like is still not finalised. What I can say is that it may encourage overseas business people, who don't wish to put their hard-won earnings into the Investor scheme, to buy into NZ businesses whose Baby Boomer owners are ready to retire. Hopefully, the success criteria for a business purchased or established under this policy will be manageable, especially at a time when economic uncertainty makes future planning a challenging exercise indeed.

Under current settings, migrants cannot buy a property zoned as Residential until they have been "ordinarily resident" in New Zealand for at least 12 months. This means that they must hold a Resident Visa for 12 months, and have actually lived in NZ for at least 184 days in those 12 months.

Hon. Winston Peters, leader of New Zealand First and former Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government, has recently signalled the desire to look at allowing Investor Residents to buy homes to live in at the top end of the market. There is no word on what sort of values we are talking about, but my guess is that it might be in the NZ$5 million plus range.

The ban on non-resident ownership was brought in to preserve housing stock for New Zealanders, owing to an ongoing shortage of affordable accommodation. The rationale for changing the rules to allow an exemption to the ban is that it would not diminish the housing stock for most local people.

The Government is being cagey about what this would look like, if it sees the light of day. However, it has been a topic of conversation for some time, and it is quite possible that something will be announced well before the next national election in late 2026.