The Wealthy Americans Escaping Stateside Tumult by Moving to New Zealand

The sun was shining, the sky was cobalt, and the clouds over New Zealand’s South Island were prettier and puffier than any Pixar animator would dare render. Science consultant Travis Taylor and his partner had racked their bikes after a 17-mile ride that trailed beside Lake Hāwea then rose through farmland before winding along the river into Wānaka. The two were relaxing on the sofas with their devices, a light summer breeze blowing through the open doors of their rented house, when they looked over at each other and realized that, without having uttered a word about it, they were deep into the exact same Google search. “We were both investigating the visa process, individually and simultaneously,” says Taylor. “It’s just one of those things that clicked for both of us.” 

That was January, and the couple, who’ve been “test-running” cities around the world since they met four years ago, are now about a year away from relocating from Washington, D.C., to New Zealand. They’re part of a wave of North Americans who see in the South Pacific nation a beautiful, peaceful promised land with a coalition government that’s as temperate as its weather—and that has recently relaxed requirements around residence by investment. 

New Zealand has long been seen as the ultimate plan B. Thanks to its ocean borders and ability to produce food and renewable energy, the country was identified by British researchers in 2021 as the No. 1 place to be in the face of climate catastrophe or civilization collapse. But even for those considering less apocalyptic turmoil, a so-called golden visa in New Zealand remains tantalizing. The U.K. scrapped its golden visa program in 2022, likewise Australia in 2024 and Spain this past April; meanwhile, the heavily subscribed Portuguese program recently removed real estate as a means of investment, and the Court of Justice of the European Union deemed Malta’s program illegal. So, New Zealand—English-speaking, low in crime, lightly populated, and free of gift, estate, and wealth taxes—is looking like paradise. 

The country’s immigration update simplifies the Active Investor Plus (A.I.P.) visa and reduces the length of time investors must stay in the country. It also scraps any English-language requirement, yet of the 189 applications filed with Immigration New Zealand between the government’s February announcement of the changes and late June, 85—about 45 percent—came from the U.S. (An application can cover an entire family; of the 609 individuals under consideration, 247, or 40 percent, are American.) The second-highest number of applications hailed from mainland China, with just 26. The government had approved 100 visas in principle, and if it were to grant the remainder as well, the minimum investment would total NZD $1.145 billion ($690 million), according to government figures. 

Although the rules officially changed on April 1, New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty saw U.S. traffic to its website start rising late in 2024. “We’re up 117 percent between January and now, year on year, from the U.S.,” says Mark Harris, the company’s managing director. He points out that while there has long been interest from affluent individuals on the West Coast—and web hits have indeed picked up from users both in San Francisco and Los Angeles—there has been standout growth in clicks from New York, with a year-to-date increase of more than 175 percent. 

The Sotheby’s listing most visited by Americans during 2025’s first quarter is on Motuarohia Island in the Bay of Islands—a property accessible only by helicopter or boat. Also in the top three is a mountain estate in Eketāhuna on the North Island that’s billed as a “mountain fortress: your ultimate off-grid sanctuary” for those who “envision safe harbour from global uncertainty or simply a serene escape from the chaos of everyday life.” (Both properties have unlisted prices.) 

“Traditionally, ultra-high-net-worth individuals have looked for tax havens,” says Stuart Nash, founder of Auckland-based immigration-advisory firm Nash Kelly Global. “I think there’s a number now who are actually looking for a safe haven.” 

When asked why there has been such a surge of American interest in the Land of the Long White Cloud, Gavin Lloyd is blunt: “Trump.” Lloyd, the general manager of residential projects at real-estate company Bayleys, says he recently showed an apartment to a tech-company head who’s “the sixth- or seventh-richest man in America…. This particular chap had children, so he was interested in getting into central Auckland because that’s within reach of some of the better schools.” 

Nash, a former minister in Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party government, lists the reasons why the wealthy would want to move to the bottom of the world: uncertainty in Europe around Russian President Putin, tensions between China and Taiwan in the South China Sea, “the tinderbox that is the Middle East,” and, above all, the Trump administration. “You’ve got a president who has declared war on Harvard University,” he says. “You’ve got the Democrats who didn’t win the election. You’ve got some Republicans who are concerned about the direction of the country. This is just a polarizing president that has moved the dial for a lot of people, from thinking about [leaving the U.S.] to putting those thoughts into action.” 

Dom Jones, managing director of Greener Pastures New Zealand, a firm that helps people secure golden visas, agrees—with caveats. “I’m sure that is true for some,” says Jones, “but I haven’t seen a clear trend in political leanings.” He finds that most of his clients have been considering New Zealand for years. “There’s pressure on tax rates, population, borders. Planning for the future of the family is more important going into the world’s next 30 years than the last 30, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum.” 

Also luring affluent Americans is the renovated A.I.P. visa itself, which lowered the minimum investment and simplified a complex weighting system by creating just two tiers. The Growth category applies to those making higher-risk investments into local businesses or managed funds and stipulates a capitalization of NZD $5 million (about $3 million) over three years, plus a requirement to spend just 21 days in New Zealand over that term. The Balanced category focuses on more passive, mixed investments such as bonds, equities, and some property and requires a minimum outlay of NZD $10 million (about $6 million) over five years and 105 days in the country—a period reduced for those investing more, in increments down to 63 days in exchange for NZD $13 million (about $7.8 million). 

Travis Taylor, the science consultant, is opting for Growth. The couple are “summer chasers,” he says, and although the former virologist hopes to work with New Zealand’s biotech industry, the pair plan to split their time roughly evenly between hemispheres. “Honestly, if you wanted just straight investments, there are probably better investments, right?” he says. “You’re kind of investing in the lifestyle.”

Others are more bullish. Paul Carman is a Kiwi who returned to his homeland in 2018 after working in finance in London for 30 years. He has since cofounded Private Capital Group in Queenstown and regularly travels overseas to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise events designed to attract A.I.P. applicants, where he finds the attendees often start out with the same low expectations: “ ‘Oh, geez, I want this for my family. I’m going to have to write off NZD $5 million,’ ” he says. But when they realize that emerging alternative markets in New Zealand are not unlike those of the U.K. or U.S. 30 years ago, they see an opportunity to get involved, to make a return. “They’re like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ Now everyone’s like a bee to the honeypot.” 

American venture capitalist Rob Coneybeer started looking seriously at New Zealand when a friend, Aaron Patzer, sold mint.com to Intuit for $170 million in 2009, then moved to an oceanfront home north of Auckland. “That was the moment I thought: This is interesting,” says the Shasta Ventures founder, who is now a permanent resident. Having worked 23 years in San Francisco and six in Seattle, Coneybeer can identify 40 or 50 “super-interesting” start-ups in New Zealand, where self-reliance, creativity, and a “number-eight wire” attitude—a Kiwi expression that uses a handy gauge of fencing material to describe the mindset of solving problems with few resources—run wide. 

In New Zealand, Coneybeer invests in early-stage start-ups, but he also organizes what he calls Far Out road trips to introduce tech figures and business leaders from the U.S. to members of the emerging local entrepreneurial ecosystem via 4×4 adventures. “Because it’s a small country of 5.5 million, people are not as transactional,” he says. “It’s much more [about] relationships.” (Besides, Coneybeer loves cars. He owns three in New Zealand, including a BMW 3 series he has converted into a race car and a Land Cruiser 70 series, a boxy S.U.V. that no longer meets U.S. standards.) 

What he really wants is to show his Silicon Valley peers that though salaries may be lower in New Zealand, so is the cost of living—while quality of life is that much higher. “There is this view that if we just bring capital into New Zealand, that will fix everything,” he says. “But the reality is, bringing in talented people that work side by side with talented Kiwis who don’t have as much experience is magical.” For Coneybeer, who travels between New Zealand and the States eight or nine times a year, part of the idyll is that the time zones neatly sync up. “You get on a plane, you have dinner, maybe watch a movie, and have seven hours of sleep,” he says. “Jet lag doesn’t exist when you fly to New Zealand.” 

It’s not as though the world has only just woken up to New Zealand. A few months before NBC News fired Matt Lauer over allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017, the former Today anchor bought a picturesque sheep and cattle ranch that stretches 28 miles along the shore of Lake Hāwaya into the Hunter Valley near Queenstown. And a decade before fictional A.I. mogul Jeff Abredazi mused about decamping to a “New Zealand sitch” in this year’s satirical Mountainhead, PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel snapped up about 480 acres of farmland on Lake Wānaka. The acquisition followed his 2011 purchase of a residence carved into Queenstown Hill and overlooking the mind-popping blue of Lake Wakatipu that locals dubbed the Plasma House, thanks to its nearly 50-foot windows. “As the panic room suggested,” wrote Max Chafkin in his biography The Contrarian, the procurement “was an escape plan. Like many in his network, Thiel was a bit of a prepper.” 

One of the billionaire V.C.’s favorite books was 1997’s The Sovereign Individual, which encourages elites to unburden themselves from nationhood through foreign citizenship. There was a public outcry in New Zealand in 2017 when it was revealed that Thiel had done just that six years earlier: He swore his oath of allegiance to New Zealand from 6,700 miles away, in Santa Monica, Calif., after spending only 12 days (rather than the then-requisite 1,350) in the country, on the basis that he agreed to invest in Kiwi start-ups. 

In some ways, the pay-for-a-passport scandal paved the way to New Zealand’s ban on foreign ownership of residential real estate, which went into effect in 2018. The government at that time, of which Stuart Nash was a member, estimated that about 10 percent of housing stock was being promoted to wealthy overseas buyers at inflated rates, effectively handing their sellers tax-free gains (the country has no capital-gains tax) and pricing New Zealanders out of the market. “House prices were rising at a rate that made it unaffordable for good, hard-working Kiwis to get on the housing ladder,” he says.

But authorities came to realize that the ban may have overstepped. “Essentially it sent a message to the world that we were closed for business,” notes Suzie Wigglesworth, national director of projects at Bayleys. “Because we shut the doors to foreign investment, there was a detrimental effect on foreign buyers coming here and understanding what they can and can’t do.” New Zealand still needed foreign capital—and continues to: Its economy has recently pulled out of the worst non-Covid recession since 1991. 

While changes to golden-visa regulations have made legal residency easier, buying a place to live is still a hurdle. Successful A.I.P. applicants do not automatically gain the right to homeownership. To purchase residential property, you need to have lived in New Zealand for at least the past 12 months, been physically present there for no less than 183 days in that period, be a New Zealand tax resident, and have a residence-class visa, such as the A.I.P. Or an investor can buy a home within their first year, as long as they receive consent under the One Home to Live In pathway of the Overseas Investment Act 2005, which considers whether the visa holder is committed to residing in New Zealand, among other factors. 

“It needs to be opened up so people can buy a holiday home to get here, to enjoy it,” says Harris from Sotheby’s. “Because then they are going to invest in the place, versus ‘Hey, we want your money, but we don’t necessarily need you.’ ” In May, then–deputy prime minister Winston Peters, asked in a radio interview about Bayleys’ NZD $17 million (about $10.2 million) unsold penthouse listing in downtown Auckland, conceded that the government would relax the foreign-buyer restrictions “very soon.” 

Greener Pastures’ Dom Jones believes “sensible policy” would mandate a substantial minimum home value available to foreigners so that ordinary New Zealanders can still afford to buy. He notes that New Zealand has a net migration gain: In 2024, about 27,000 more people came to the country than left, down by about 100,000 from the previous year. “In the end,” Jones says, “the challenge on housing stock’s not huge.” 

He and others expect the government to implement restrictions on buying properties below NZD $5 million to $6 million (roughly $3 million to $3.6 million). “Then you’re not competing with first-home buyers,” says Nash. “You’re competing with Lotto winners.” That said, Nash doesn’t want a price floor to inadvertently crush investor interest in certain regions. Where he lives in Napier, there are orchards, vineyards, and lots of sunshine, but there are few multimillion-dollar houses. 

Nash emphasizes that dreamy visions of New Zealand are actually accurate. Breathtaking views abound. The police don’t carry guns. People are friendly. And there are more sheep than humans. “You can play golf in the morning and go skiing in the afternoon,” he says. “That’s the reality, not some utopian vision.”