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New Zealand bans sales of homes to foreigners
New Zealand's parliament has banned many foreigners from buying existing homes in the country - a move aimed at making properties more affordable. The ban only applies to non-residents. Australians and Singaporeans are exempt because of free-trade deals.
New Zealand is facing a housing affordability crisis which has left home ownership out of reach for many. Low interest rates, limited housing stock and immigration have driven up prices in recent years.
[...] [Foreigners] are now banned from purchasing most types of homes - but they will be able to make limited investments in new apartments in large developments.
[...] Chinese investors have been among the biggest and most active offshore buyers of property in the New Zealand market. Also, some wealthy Americans - like Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel - have become New Zealand citizens or have bought property in the country. Average prices in New Zealand have risen more than 60% in the past 10 years, while in Auckland - the country's largest city - they have almost doubled.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Friday August 17 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)
The idea of the law is that non-resident foreigners can't buy most real estate.
At least in the US, if we had a comparable law, there would be an easy workaround - form an LLC in the US, and have the LLC buy the property. You do not have to be a US citizen to form an LLC in the US. Because the LLC is a US corporation, it's a "domestic" buyer, and it's hard (in some cases, nearly impossible) for the seller to even know the effective owner will be a non-citizen. Most of the apartment buildings I've lived in in the US were owned by LLC's, rather than the owner directly (this was primarily for liability purposes, not for hiding ownership, but it still proves the point it's trivially easy in the US for an LLC to buy and hold property).
Wondering if New Zealand has a similarly easy passthrough corporate structure that would effectively make this measure dead on arrival (which, again, I argue it would be in the US....)
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Friday August 17 2018, @01:54PM
Looked to me (when I read the article) as though most foreigners couldn't buy houses but it was perfectly legal to buy vacant land and build houses on it.