2 August 2016

No good reason to allow non-resident foreign buyers

Land Information Minister Louise Upston can’t name a good reason to allow non-resident overseas investors to buy New Zealand homes because there isn’t one, the Green Party said today.

Minister Upston was questioned this morning about new Land Information New Zealand data on the number of overseas buyers in the New Zealand property market.

“Every home sold to an overseas investor is a home that a local family can’t buy,” said Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei.

“The only thing overseas investors do for New Zealand is pour fuel on the housing crisis fire.

"National says it’s only 2907 properties so far this year but even that’s 2907 properties that New Zealand families are locked out of.

“The Government can choose to put first-home buyers before non-resident foreign investors, but instead it’s choosing to pretend this isn’t an issue.

“To buy a house in New Zealand, people should have to be citizens or permanent residents.

“There are obviously problems with the overseas buyer data collected by LINZ, because it doesn’t differentiate between New Zealand citizens and people here on a temporary visa, and the Minister herself admits people aren’t filling out the forms correctly.

“This is yet another example of National choosing to back property speculators instead of Kiwi families.

“Restricting overseas buyers is one of the tools we need to use to make housing more affordable, along with a capital gains tax (excluding the family home) and a big, government-led house-building programme,” Mrs Turei said.

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