Laurent Lore - Business & Investor Edition

Laurent Lore

Investor & Business Edition

November 2025

Greetings!

As I pointed out in a recent blog post, New Zealand is rolling out a menu of investment-based visas at different price points:

Active Investor Plus (“AIP”) for NZ$5 million or $10 million;
Business Investor Visa (“BIV”) opening late in November, for $1 million or $2 million; and
Start Up Visa (“SUV”), which might come in at around $500,000.

Each has its own challenges and potential risks. However, they reflect the Government's high level of interest at attracting offshore capital to this country.

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 for you.

Simon Laurent

Principal

slaurent@laurentlaw.co.nz

Business Investor Visa

This is the new kid on the block, about to launch this month.

Calling it an "investor" visa is a little misleading. It actually relies on the applicant buying, or buying part of, an existing NZ business and being actively involved in running that business successfully for several years. In this way it replaces the failed Entrepreneur scheme.

If you spend $1 million, you get a Work Visa for up to 4 years. After 3 years you can apply for Residence, so long as the business is trading profitably.

Putting in $2 million speeds things up a lot. After the first year you can file a Residence application, which has a condition attached that the business must still be operating successfully 3 years later.

Any business suitable for purchase must employ at least 5 full-time NZ staff, and must have been operating for at least 5 years already. In addition, by the time you apply for Residence, it must have added at least 1 more full-time employee.

Perhaps not a visa for the faint-hearted, but it gives a viable alternative to those who still want to be an active business owner, are aged under 56 years old, and don't have quite enough capital for the Active Investor Plus option.

Buy a House if the Price is Right

Since our last newsletter, there is now light at the end of the tunnel for those who are stumping up a lot of cash to secure Residence here.

Under current Overseas Investment settings, after you get a Resident Visa you must spend at least 6 months in a year residing in NZ before you are allowed to buy a residential home. A law change will go before Parliament by mid-2026 to allow immediate purchase of a house for those who put at least $5 million into investment to secure Residence. That means the Active Investors.

The proviso? The house must be worth at least $5 million itself. No cheap apartment will do. The idea is to enable wealthy migrants to have a home to call their own, without depleting the stretched housing stock for most New Zealanders.

There is some disappointment that this positive move will take a while to come into force. However, if you are considering an application for the AIP, the opportunity to buy a property to live in may be in place by the time your Resident Visa is granted.

How is the AIP Doing?

Still going strong, by all accounts. Over 400 applications have been received, representing potential or active investment of around NZ$2.5 billion.

A large number of managed fund operators have registered with Invest NZ to offer a portfolio approach to direct investment, which may have a more palatable risk profile for some than simply buying shares in a start-up or growth enterprise.

The classes of Growth Category investments has been extended to include certain infrastructure projects, developed for lease or for sale. Again, these may be safer than more speculative "new industries" companies, and will also contribute to sewing up the gaps in New Zealand's material fabric.

The Government has been on quite the charm offensive in the last few months, with roadshows in the US, Germany, and Singapore, although a Hong Kong event has had to be rescheduled to Q1 2026 owing to Typhoon Regasa.