Golden Visas and the sensitive land hurdle

The changes to New Zealand’s Active Investor Plus rules allowing holders to buy one home valued more than $5 million have drawn plenty of attention. Now the “5 million plus” scheme is live, our luxury agents are finding sensitive land rules are materially shaping the properties these buyers can realistically pursue.

The new rules went live in March 2026. To help understand the early activity, we drew on government disclosures, plus a survey of our own luxury agents to understand what is happening at the coalface.

The government reports 13 applications have been granted so far for purchase of properties under the scheme. For comparison, at the time of writing REINZ data indicates 57 residential and lifestyle properties sold across NZ for more than $5 million during the first three months of 2026.

Luxury agents are typically seeing small numbers of these buyers focused into key locations - specifically the Auckland region which is seeing the strongest activity, followed by Queenstown-Lakes District. The buyers are often cautious and many are unfamiliar with New Zealand’s property markets.

The buyers are mainly interested in waterfront/coastal homes and lifestyle properties. Understanding and navigating New Zealand’s sensitive land rules is a key challenge for Golden Visa buyers. While the new rules allow them to purchase one home over $5 million, they remain unable to buy sensitive land without other forms of visas or consents.

Examples of sensitive land include various forms of waterfront property, and non-urban land exceeding 5 hectares. In some regions, homes above the $5 million price point will often be sensitive land given aspects like waterfront locations and size will drive their value over the price threshold. This quickly narrows the pool of viable homes.

At this stage, our view is the rule changes have created real activity, but not the tidal wave of buying activity that some had speculated about. This emerging buyer pool is important but remains relatively small portion of the overall demand. The fine print around sensitive land is also having a real effect on which properties they can realistically pursue.