- Foreign buyers snapped up 16 luxury homes after new visa rules allowed purchases over $5 million.
- Buyers from five countries, including the US and China, mainly targeted Auckland and Queenstown-Lakes.
- Experts warn the initial surge may slow, with most high-end properties still bought by locals and expats.
The number of luxury homes foreign buyers snapped up quadrupled within the space of a month, new data shows – but some industry experts are warning high-end sellers not to get too excited.
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As of last Thursday, 16 applications for property purchases had been approved by the Overseas Investment Office since March 6, when the foreign buyer rules were changed to let overseas investors with an Active Investor Plus visa - the so-called golden visa - acquire homes worth $5 million or more.
So far, buyers from five countries - the US, South Korea, China, Germany and Japan – have taken advantage of the new rules. Eleven homes in Auckland have gone to foreign buyers, followed by four in Queenstown-Lakes and one in Hawke’s Bay.
The Auckland properties include a waterfront Glendowie mansion, which former NBR owner Barry Coleman sold to an Asian family for $13.8m and a Coatesville estate, which was once owned by reality TV star Michelle Blanchard and was sold to a visa holder for $11.4m. Elsewhere, golden visa holders bought a Havelock North lifestyle block for $10.5m, a knock-down overlooking Lake Hayes and a $7m-plus Wanaka property.
The Auckland mansion of former NBR owner Barry Colman was snapped up by a golden visa-holder from Asia. Photo / Supplied
At the end of March, OneRoof reported that four applications by AIP holders had been granted.
Data released to OneRoof shows that one application for an AIP purchase was rejected before it reached the assessment stage.
Land Information New Zealand, however, declined to give information about exactly where these homes were or the sale prices to “protect the privacy of the individuals involved”. It also declined to provide the total sale value of the 16 sales.
Bayleys head of insights Chris Farhi said the 16 approvals could be a result of “pent-up demand” from buyers who had been looking for a New Zealand home for some time but were waiting for the new rules to come into effect.
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“It’s unclear if we are going to see an initial ramp up, which then slows down once that pent-up demand has cleared through.”
Farhi said while 16 was a “reasonable” number, the bulk of the expensive properties in New Zealand were still being bought by locals and expats rather than golden visa holders. He said that there were 57 residential and lifestyle properties sold for over $5m in the first quarter of 2026.
However, a recent survey of Bayleys agents selling in the luxury space suggested there was more interest in the pipeline from overseas buyers.
Farhi had been “a little bit surprised” to see that most of the purchases were in Auckland because it had been assumed that foreign buyers would target Queenstown Lakes instead. That suggested visa-holders were buying homes as permanent residences rather than holiday homes.
Bayleys head of insights Chris Farhi was surprised Queenstown-Lakes wasn't as big a presence in the sales. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Waterfront Herne Bay, in Auckland, is where local rich-listers search for real estate. Photo / Chris Tarpey
Farhi pointed out that one of the hurdles for some regions to attract foreign buyers was that the most expensive homes would likely be too large or coastal – two areas exempt under the rules. “If you look across the country, to get a $5m house is going to be difficult because the price points are not up there. And the second thing is if you did find that $5m house, there’s a good chance it’s on sensitive land."
Martelli Buyers Agents founder Alex Martelli said the AIP program was attracting investment into the country, but also made people think about obtaining work visas to move permanently. “A lot of the AIP deals that are being done at the moment aren’t sudden deals. It’s not like people suddenly get their visas and go, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to go and buy in Auckland right now.' They are people who have already been looking at New Zealand or been under a different visa and switching.”
Like Farhi, she was unsure if the number of purchases would continue to snowball. “I hate to pour cold water on what agents are saying, and they may be right, there might be tons who have suddenly poured in and who they are dealing with, but what I think you are going to see is a healthy feed of people increasingly investing the money and going ‘Actually I’m really interested to buy property in New Zealand.'"
Martelli Buyers Agents founder Alex Martelli says it would be a mistake to assume foreign buyers had unlimited budgets. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Martelli said Auckland and Queenstown appeared to be attracting two very different buyers.
People seemed to choose Auckland if they were looking to move to New Zealand permanently and wanted access to top schools for their children, while they opted for Queenstown if they were after a secondary home that offered a fun lifestyle and beautiful scenery, she said.
The overseas buyers she was working with were less interested in moving to central Auckland and instead were looking at properties on the North Shore or lifestyle properties in suburbs such as Dairy Flat or Coatesville. “Those areas personify what they see New Zealand as, but are still connected to a community and schools and a CBD and have a life around them.”
She had fielded one enquiry from an American buyer interested in Herne Bay – a place where a lot of New Zealand rich-listers converge. The buyer had struggled to get their head around the value of properties there. “We have this attitude in New Zealand that, ‘Oh, for Americans it will be super cheap to buy here’, but actually there will be plenty who are actually putting quite a lot of their savings into the AIP so that $5m or $10m is already a lot of money for them, so they may well be at the $5m to $6m level not the $10m level.”
Oliver Road managing director Cam Winter believed more deals were coming and said the 16 approvals were the start of a longer-term trend.
It made sense that more golden visa holders were buying in Auckland because it had more $5m-plus homes for sale. "Treasury's own figures put Queenstown's qualifying stock at around 913 properties against Auckland's 7192. The early ratio of consents is broadly in line with that, so I wouldn't read too much into eleven versus four at this stage."
He believed AIP applications for property would continue to grow, adding that buyers serious about Queenstown tended to take their time. "They visit, they revisit, and they buy carefully," he said.
"Sixteen consents in two months is the start of a longer-term trend, not a failure of policy. The applicants we are working with would generally expect to be settling later in 2026 or into 2027."
However, he said one of the biggest frustrations on the ground was the shortage of high-calibre stock. "The very top of the Queenstown market is held by people who do not need to sell. I had a buyer who recently put $28m on an off-market property, and the vendor simply declined. They did not want or need to sell, at any number."
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