NZ faces ultra-luxury home shortage as golden visa buyers hunt for $20m-plus properties
Wednesday, 4 March 2026
New Zealand may not have enough ultra-luxury homes to cater to rich overseas buyer demand ‒ and it could impact on the take up of “golden visas”, real estate insiders say.
Luxury property specialist Sarah Liu, from Bayleys Real Estate, said some of the wealthiest buyers operated exclusively in the $20 million-plus bracket.
“If buyers at that level cannot identify a sufficient pool of appropriate properties, there is a real possibility some may choose not to proceed with the visa and we may lose them to another market.”
It is not that no high-end homes are available. There are some spectacular properties that come to market.
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The country’s 10 most expensive house sales of 2025 all involved transactions of more than $10m, with a cliff top property in Herne Bay, Auckland costing the most at a cool $35m.
New figures from realestate.co.nz showed there were 624 properties listed for $5m-plus nationwide on March 2, and of those 152 were in the $10m-plus bracket, with 108 of them in Auckland.
But the number of homes valued above that threshold dropped off sharply with each incremental million.
Liu said at present the number of homes that genuinely met international ultra-luxury benchmarks was extremely limited.
To provide buyers with a range of options, at least five times the current number of properties valued at $20m-plus was needed, she said.
“While a number of sales in the $20m-plus bracket are transacted off-market, the pool of properties in this segment remains smaller than the number of enquiries coming through.”
Until recently, the foreign buyer ban meant there was a limited pool of buyers for ultra-high end properties.
But that has changed with the Government’s overhaul of the “golden visa” scheme, and a drive to encourage foreign investors to “choose New Zealand as a destination for their capital”.
In October it was announced the ban would be lifted for those with an “active investor plus” visa, and from March 6 those visa holders will be able to buy or build a home worth more than $5 million.
The visa seems to have caught the eye of well-heeled overseas investors, with recently released figures from Immigration Minister Erica Stanford showing 573 applications have been made.
And that was translating into high-end property interest, according to realestate.co.nz. It has released new figures showing 36,000 overseas-based searches for $5m-plus homes over the past year.
Of those, about 42% were for properties priced above $5m, rather than sitting exactly at the minimum threshold required by the active investor plus visa criteria.
Realestate.co.nz chief executive Sarah Wood said that over the past year the number of international searches in the premium end of the market made up 40% of the activity in that space.
Looking at the distribution of the search activity highlighted where interest was concentrated.
“The United States accounts for 19% of international $5m-plus searches, followed by the United Kingdom at 9% and Canada at 4%. That profile reflects demand from established wealth markets rather than speculative traffic.”
But the very top end of New Zealand’s residential property market was relatively immature by global standards, she said.
“The active investor plus visa programme introduces a positive demand shock into this segment of the market overnight, and the supply has not had a chance to grow organically over time.
“The result is significant pressure on the supply of houses valued in the tens of millions.”
Wood said $5m-plus overseas searches accounted for less than 1% of total platform activity, but they represented a thin but high-value segment of the market.
The relatively small pipeline of ultra-premium housing meant there were significant development implications, as each home in the $20m-plus category was a substantial capital project, she said.
“Delivering even five to 10 additional residences that genuinely meet that buyer standard would equate to well over $100m in residential development.”
“When you aggregate even a limited number of ultra-premium builds the investment requirement quickly runs into the hundreds of millions.”
Liu said most buyers in the ultra-luxury bracket were not looking for a renovation project, and the preference was for a completed, design-led residence with premium finishes and minimal work required.
A $20m-plus buyer was typically focused on exclusivity, architectural significance and international comparability, and would not compromise on what they wanted, she said.
“If the property does not deliver scale, privacy and design pedigree they will wait. They are used to assessing estates in markets such as Sydney, London or Los Angeles.”
Auckland demand was high and concentrated in established blue-chip locations, such as Remuera, and there was also strong enquiry for premium countryside estates, and homes in Queenstown and Waiheke, Liu said.
“But trophy waterfront homes, elevated properties with expansive water views and substantial landholdings offering privacy are particularly scarce.”
NZ Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Mark Harris said there had been a significant pick up in activity in the $8m to $10m-plus end of the market, and enquiry from active visa plus holders was playing a part.
He had received one inquiry from an active visa plus holder this week and two last week, and traffic to his company’s website from the US in January and February was up 61% on the same time last year, he said.
“Not all active visa plus holders will want to buy property, but Australian and Singaporean buyers have not been subject to a ban and are active in the upper end of the market.
“And the presence of active visa plus buyers will put pressure on those purchasers, and domestic purchasers to come to the market.”
At the moment there was stock in the key areas of Auckland, Waiheke and the Southern Lakes area around Queenstown and Wanaka to show high-end buyers, he said.
“We expect more listings will come on to the market over the next few months once the buyer ban change comes into force, and we’re working on a few big new listings in the background.
“So there is not a shortage of those ultra-luxury properties ‒ but we could certainly do with more of them.”
Harris said their data showed that nationally $5m-plus sales were up 55.6% year on year, and high value demand was increasingly focused in the Southern Lakes area.
Overseas buyer participation in the Southern Lakes market had doubled year-on-year, with their share of purchasers at 13% in January and February compared with 6.5% at the same time last year, he said.
Meanwhile, data from property research company Cotality showed there were 214 $5m-plus sales last year, and of those 149 were in Auckland and 39 in Queenstown.
Within that, 24 were $10m-plus sales, and 20 of those were in Auckland.