Buying a home in New Zealand sounds simple, but the rules about who’s allowed to buy can get a bit tricky.
If you’re wondering whether you qualify to buy here, you might need some legal advice — but to save you time and maybe some cash, here’s a quick and simple checklist to figure it out yourself.
First up, the easy bit:
If you’re a Kiwi citizen, you’re good to go. You can buy residential property with zero hassle.
Now, if you’re not a citizen, things get a little more complicated. If that’s you, here are the 3 key things to check:
- Your visa: You need a Resident Visa. Sorry, working visas, student visas, tourist visas — those don’t count.
- Tax residency: You must be an NZ tax resident.
Time spent in NZ: This one trips up a lot of people. You need to have been living in NZ for the past 12 months, and during that year, you must have spent at least 183 days physically in the country.
So if you’ve been overseas visiting family for more than 6 months in total, you won’t qualify. And it doesn’t matter when you got your resident visa — if you’ve lived here for the last year and spent enough time in NZ, you’re good.
This applies whether you’re buying to live in yourself or as an investment property.
There’s one more thing:
If you’re not a resident but you have a de facto partner who is, you can still buy together. So that’s a helpful loophole.
Still not sure if you’re eligible? No worries — just reach out and we’ll help you figure it out. Then you can go house hunting with confidence.
