Erica Stanford: Immigration Minister on the coalition allowing Golden Visa holders to buy homes here

The Immigration Minister hopes allowing people on the Golden Visa to buy a home here will boost the economy in the long-run.

The coalition's come to an agreement - allowing people on Active Investor Plus visas to buy or build one home, worth at least $5 million - if they invest at least another $5 million into the economy.

Erica Stanford says she didn't want anything to skew the market - and $5 million seemed like a good figure.

"It means that these people can come, settle in New Zealand, get used to the landscape, spend more money here - but also not skew the property market, which is what we wanted to avoid."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afternoon, The government's finally made its long awaited announcement on
foreigners being able to buy houses here. Foreign investors who
invest five million dollars will now also be allowed to
buy one house that costs five million dollars or more.
Erica Stanford is the Immigration mini stand with us.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey, Erica, good afternoon. How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'm well? Thank you? So why five million?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
We wanted to make sure that the investment in the
housing market wasn't going to cause any problems for first
home buyers or skew the market. And I think a
five million was a good figure because it represents only
the very top one percent, and so it means that
these people can come settle in New Zealand, get used
to the landscape, spend more money here, but also not

(00:43):
skew the property market, which is what we wanted to avoid.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
How many houses have we got in the country worth
five million or more?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Well, it's one percent of the market, and I did
I could. I heard the number today and I forgot
what it was. But it's one percent of whatever that
figure is, and I'll see if I can look it
up while I'm talking to you.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Thank you. I appreciated how many investors. Do you reckon
we'll be attracted as a result.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, I know the three hundred have already put their
applications and many of them will be keen to have
a house here. Not all of them immediately, but many
of them will. I'm expecting that this will mean we
will get more applications. I know that when I've talked
to lawyers and immigration agents that've said that they've got
people who are interested, but the house buying thing was
a problem. So I'm expecting we'll start to see a

(01:27):
little uptick in applications. We've seen a we saw a
huge surge at the beginning. It has tailed off now
and I expect we'll see another, maybe not the same
surge as we saw at the beginning, but I think
we'll see an uptick. So I'm expecting, you know, another
couple of hundred this year.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
This was it seems like it was a really hard
negotiation in cabinet, was it?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
It actually wasn't. And look, I think Winstone has been
on the record over the fast past few weeks saying
that you know, he wanted to get this done, but look,
some things take a little bit of time. I wasn't
part of the negotiations.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
But if it wasn't such a hard negotiation, why is
it taking you guys two years to do it.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well. Firstly, we only bought the AIP visa in April
this year and it really only had surged numbers in
the last couple of months. So up until then, the
previous settings that Labor put in place weren't attracting the
levels of migrants that we've seen, so it wasn't it
wasn't really an issue until the last couple of months
where we've seen these three hundred applications with others waiting

(02:27):
to put the application in. So it's only been a
more recent issue that we've started to talk about.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
All Right, hey, thank you for your time. As always,
Eric Stanford, Immigration Minister. For more from Heather Duplassy Allen Drive,
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