Pānui - December 2025

Kia ora koutou

Welcome to our final Pānui of 2025.

We are pleased to share that the Overseas Investment (National Interest and Other Matters) Amendment Bill was passed on Friday 12 December and will come into force sometime in the new year. The team is working hard to ensure that these changes are implemented smoothly, and you should expect to hear more about the changes early in 2026.

A reminder that our office will close at 5pm on Wednesday 24 December and reopen again on Monday 5 January.

Read on below for updates to our application form and the new resources to help investors prepare clearer, more complete consent applications. These changes streamline our assessment process, provide greater certainty about likely consent conditions, and reduce the need for further information requests. They also support the upcoming legislative changes and our ongoing work to improve assessment timeframes and decision efficiency.

On behalf of the overseas investment team, I hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable holiday break.

Ngā mihi

Rebecca McAtamney

Head of Regulatory Practice and Delivery
Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand

Changes to allow investor visa holders to buy a house in New Zealand

Investor migrants with an Active Investor Plus, Investor 1 or Investor 2 visa will soon be allowed to buy or build a home in New Zealand worth more than NZ $5 million. These changes are contained in the Overseas Investment (National Interest and Other Matters) Amendment Bill that was passed last week and will come into force in the new year.

To assist investors, vendors, and their advisors, we have a published a short guide to how the new rules will work. You can access this here.

New homebuying rules for investor visa holders

New application form and resources for applicants

We've updated our application form and published new resources to help investors prepare applications for consent.

The updated application form includes targeted questions about the investment and a new section focused on the scope of the consent required and conditions likely to be imposed.

The purpose of this is to streamline our assessment process to ensure we have the information we need to draft consent wording and, where possible, to consult on conditions as part of the application process.

We've also published three new resources: consent examples with drafting guidance, standard conditions of consent, and special conditions for forestry activities. All resources are available to download from our website.

These changes will help ensure applicants can provide the information we need to assess applications quickly without further information requests. They also give applicants greater certainty about what their consent will look like and what conditions will apply.

These changes will also prepare us to implement the Overseas Investment (National Interest and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and support our ongoing efforts to improve assessment timeframes to make decisions as efficiently as possible.

The new application form is available from today, 18 December 2025, however we will continue to accept the previous form until 31 December 2025. Please ensure you use the latest version of the application form when preparing your application in 2026. You can contact us at oio@linz.govt.nz if you have any questions about the changes.

Decision summaries for November 2025

Decision summaries are published the month after a decision is made. The latest decision summaries are listed here, including standing consent notifications.

Benefit to New Zealand

202500567 - Arvida RV1 Limited
202500359 - Datagrid NZ Ltd Partnership & DG Founders General Partner Pte Ltd
202500638 - Vinci Construction New Zealand Limited
202500558 - Radiata Pine Breeding Company Limited

Significant Business Assets only

202500523 - Qubit BidCo Limited

Special Forestry

202500569 - Future Forests NZ Limited

Residential Land Development

202500670 - Bupa Care Services NZ Limited and Bupa Retirement Villages Limited
202500738 - Lochy Road Queenstown Limited Partnership

Exemption - Discretionary

202500573 - Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Nomura IM Investment LLC
202500354 - Withheld under s9(2)(a) of the Official Information Act 1982

Notification under standing consent – forestry

202300752 - Kauri Forestry LP
202200134 - Totara Forestry Services Limited