New Zealand Golden Visa Cost 2026: NZ$5m and 21 Days

Key takeaways

The New Zealand golden visa cost in government charges is NZ$27,470, and that figure covers the whole family. Immigration New Zealand's fee table splits it into a NZ$12,070 application fee and a NZ$15,400 immigration levy. Several competing cost pages quote roughly NZ$6,000 in government fees, which is less than a quarter of the real charge.

The investment is NZ$5 million for 36 months on the Growth category, or NZ$10 million for 60 months on Balanced. The old scheme asked NZ$15 million under a weighted model. That version drew 116 applications in two and a half years; the rebuilt one took 801 in fifteen months.

Growth investors must spend only 21 days in New Zealand across the whole 36-month period. Balanced asks 105 days over 60 months, reducible by 14 days for every extra NZ$1 million placed in Growth-category assets, to a floor of 63. There is no English-language test.

Only four of 801 applications were declined between April 2025 and June 2026, and approval in principle averaged 27 working days. The money is the barrier here, not the adjudication.

Since March 2026 a holder can buy one New Zealand home worth more than NZ$5 million, which the foreign-buyer ban otherwise blocks. Consent costs NZ$2,040 or NZ$3,500 and takes about five working days — but that house does not count toward the NZ$5 million investment.

On this page

This guide prices the visa from the government's own tables rather than from adviser marketing. It separates the application fee from the levy, sets the two categories against each other, explains which investments actually qualify after two rule changes, totals the cost for a household, works through the NZ$5 million house carve-out and the consent fee nobody quotes, reads the official approval and processing data, and ends on the four-year tax exemption that changes the real cost of moving. This site's renderer does not emit heading anchors, so the list below is a map rather than a set of jump links.

• New Zealand golden visa cost in 2026: the NZ$27,470 line
• Growth or Balanced: two prices, two timetables
• What actually counts as an acceptable investment
• New Zealand golden visa cost for a family of four
• The NZ$5 million house: the 2026 carve-out and what consent costs
• What the official data says about approval odds and processing
• The four-year tax exemption most cost pages leave out
• Related guides on Domicila

New Zealand golden visa cost in 2026: the NZ$27,470 line

The programme's real name is the Active Investor Plus visa, and its own page on the Immigration New Zealand site prices it from NZD $27,470. That number is not one fee. It is an application fee plus a separate immigration levy, and the split matters because the levy is the larger half and is the part competing pages drop.

The fee and levy table sets the current rates, in force from 1 October 2024. It also shows something almost nobody reports: the application fee is banded by where you apply from, and Pacific applicants pay roughly half.

Set that against the figure in circulation. Several pages ranking for this term put government fees at around NZ$6,000 for the lead applicant, which appears to be the pre-2024 charge of roughly NZ$7,900 misremembered downward. The levy alone is NZ$15,400. If you are budgeting from one of those pages you are short by more than NZ$20,000 before anyone opens your file.

The rest of the budget is not set by government at all, and that is the honest way to present it. There is no published schedule for licensed advisers, lawyers, source-of-funds work or fund due diligence, and quotes vary with family size and how complicated your money is.

The two estimate rows are estimates, and we have labelled them rather than dressing them as prices. Ask any adviser to itemise those lines against the official ones above, because the official lines are the only part of this that is fixed. Our golden visa cost comparison does the same exercise across the European programmes.

Growth or Balanced: two prices, two timetables

On 1 April 2025 the government replaced a single NZ$15 million weighted scheme with two categories, and the change is the reason this visa is worth a look at all. The archived instructions for the old version asked for NZ$7.5 million inside 18 months, NZ$15 million inside 36, and 117 days in the country across a 48-month investment period. The replacement asks a third of the money and a sixth of the time.

Growth is not the cheap option so much as the concentrated one: half the money, but it has to go into New Zealand businesses or funds that back them. Balanced doubles the cheque and lets you sit in government bonds, which is why it attracts a sixth of the volume and almost all of the risk-averse money.

The presence requirement is where this visa separates itself from everything else in the market. Twenty-one days across three years is roughly a single holiday. Balanced starts at 105 days across five years, and buys that down at a published rate.

The reduction is 14 days per additional NZ$1 million placed in Growth-category investments, and it stops at 42 days. So the floor on Balanced is 63 days however much you add, and a Balanced investor who wants the lightest possible presence is paying NZ$13 million to get to 63 days when NZ$5 million on Growth gets to 21. Compare that with Portugal, where the days are light but the naturalisation clock is long, or Thailand's elite visa, which asks nothing of your capital and gives nothing back in residence rights.

Both categories give a resident visa that lets you live, work and study in New Zealand indefinitely, with permanent residence available later once the investment and presence conditions are met. There is no English-language requirement and no upper age limit, though you must pass health checks, which include a medical examination and chest X-ray, and character checks requiring police certificates less than six months old for everyone aged 17 and over.

What actually counts as an acceptable investment

This is where applications stall, and where two 2026 rule changes have already made older guides wrong. The acceptable investments list is maintained by Invest New Zealand, and a managed fund only qualifies for Growth if it is on that published list. Buying into a reasonable-looking New Zealand fund that is not on the list does not count.

Two rows there deserve emphasis. Discretionary investment management services were removed as an acceptable investment in December 2025, which the official quarterly report records in a footnote. They still account for NZ$271.5 million of committed Growth capital from before the change, so you will find guides describing them as a live option. They are not one.

Philanthropy is capped at 20% of the total investment from 1 June 2026. A donation to a New Zealand charity is genuinely acceptable up to that ceiling, which on a Growth file means up to NZ$1 million of the NZ$5 million can be money you never get back. That is a deliberate design choice by the government and a significant one for anyone comparing this against a Caribbean contribution, where the whole payment is non-returnable.

The last row is the one that catches people who have read about the 2026 property change. A house you live in is not an investment for visa purposes, no matter what it cost. The Land Information New Zealand guidance says so directly: consent can be obtained to buy a home, but this "will not be considered an acceptable investment for the purposes of an investor visa application."

If the investment menu is what is pushing you away, our golden visa countries guide covers the programmes that still accept straightforward property purchases.

New Zealand golden visa cost for a family of four

Here the arithmetic breaks in your favour, and it is the single most underreported fact about this visa. The official page states that you can include your partner and your dependent children aged 24 and younger in the application. One application, one fee, one levy.

So a family of four pays NZ$27,470 in government charges. Not NZ$27,470 each. The investment does not scale with family size either: NZ$5 million is NZ$5 million whether you arrive alone or with three dependants. Set that against how the rest of this market prices families.

The age-24 ceiling is unusually generous. Most programmes cut dependent children off at 18 or, with conditions, 21 — the US Gold Card uses unmarried children under 21. A New Zealand applicant with a 23-year-old at university abroad can include them at no extra government charge, which for some families is the deciding feature rather than a footnote.

The caveat is that the professional bill does scale. Source-of-funds work, police certificates and medicals multiply per person even when the government fee does not, so a large family still costs more to prepare — it just does not cost more to file. Our citizenship by investment family cost guide sets out how the per-dependant model works where it does apply.

The NZ$5 million house: the 2026 carve-out and what consent costs

New Zealand has banned most foreign buyers from residential property since 2018. In March 2026 a narrow door opened: holders of an Active Investor Plus, Investor 1 or Investor 2 visa may buy or build one home worth more than NZ$5 million. Land Information New Zealand published detailed guidance in March 2026, and it is the most useful document in this whole file because it is the one the competing pages have not read.

Consent under the Overseas Investment Act is required before you buy, not after. You either hold consent before signing, bidding or tendering, or you make the agreement conditional on it — LINZ suggests allowing about 20 working days. You cannot bid at auction at all unless the vendor has agreed in advance that your bid is conditional on consent.

The NZ$5 million threshold is measured more strictly than you would expect. It covers the agreed price of land and fixtures only, including GST, and excludes chattels — furniture, curtains, freestanding appliances, rugs, garden equipment. Vendor and purchaser have to agree how the price splits between the two, and a vendor cannot pad the figure with artwork, a vehicle or a cash-back arrangement to lift it over NZ$5 million. Renovation spending does not count either: if the purchase price is NZ$5 million or less, a new house has to be built.

Several categories of land are shut out even for eligible visa holders, and this is where a deal can die late.

Three further conditions are worth budgeting for. You may own only one property bought under these rules, and must sell it before buying another. If you buy bare land, a dwelling must be completed within three years of consent, extendable only if LINZ is satisfied you are making good progress. And the house can be lived in, used as a holiday home or run as a business — the Act places no limit on use, though local planning rules may.

Buying through a company or trust is allowed with ownership limits: the visa holder, or the holder with their spouse or partner jointly, needs more than a 25% ownership or control interest, and other overseas persons must not cumulatively hold more than 25%. Take legal advice before signing anything; LINZ says so three times in its own guidance.

What the official data says about approval odds and processing

In September 2026 the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment proactively released its quarterly report on the visa covering the period to 30 June 2026. It is the best evidence available on this programme and it is not quoted anywhere else in the search results for this term.

Four declines out of 801 applications. Five times as many people withdrew as were refused. That is not a programme that screens hard on merit; it screens on whether you have the money and whether your money is clean, and if both are true the adjudication is close to a formality. Treat any adviser who prices their fee against approval risk with that table in hand.

Processing is quick by the standards of this market. The report records approval in principle in an average of 27 working days, and then a further 27 working days to full approval once evidence of the transferred and invested funds is provided. The visa's own page commits to approving 80% of applications in principle within four months. Between those two stages you have six months to move the money and invest it.

Where the money actually goes is the other thing the report settles. Of NZ$2.12 billion committed, NZ$1.49 billion came through Growth and NZ$627.3 million through Balanced.

Private credit taking 70% of all Growth managed-fund money is worth pausing on. The category was sold as capital for New Zealand's productive economy, and direct investment into businesses came to NZ$27 million — about 2% of Growth capital, spread across nine companies in the most recent quarter. Most Growth investors are lending, not building.

Demand is still climbing. The June quarter brought 171 applications against 123 in the previous one, a 39% rise, with May 2026 the highest month since the relaunch. Americans lead by a wide margin at 242 applications covering 730 people, then China at 142, Hong Kong at 100, Germany at 54 and Taiwan at 43. For how this compares with the queues elsewhere, see our citizenship by investment processing time guide.

The four-year tax exemption most cost pages leave out

A cost page that stops at fees has skipped the largest number in the calculation. New Zealand gives most new migrants a temporary tax exemption on foreign income for about four years after they become tax resident, and for someone with NZ$5 million invested offshore that is worth more than every fee on this page combined.

You qualify if you became a New Zealand tax resident on or after 1 April 2006 and were not tax resident at any point in the preceding ten years. There is nothing to apply for — it applies automatically — and you can only have it once in your life.

The exclusions are the trap. Foreign employment income and income from personal services are not exempt, so a consultant who keeps billing overseas clients from an Auckland desk is taxable on that from day one, while their dividend and rental income is not. Double tax agreements may soften the overlap, but the exemption itself does not cover earned income.

Four things end it early, and two are easy to do by accident: claiming Working for Families tax credits, including Best Start, by you or a transitional-resident partner; putting exempt income into an IR3 return; telling a foreign tax authority you will pay New Zealand tax on your overseas income for the period; or notifying Inland Revenue that you no longer want transitional-resident status. Any one of those ends the exemption for good.

Note also what this exemption is not. It is a four-year grace period, not a tax regime. New Zealand has no lump-sum deal of the Swiss kind and no non-dom carve-out; once the four years run out you are taxed on worldwide income like any other resident. If the tax position is the point of the move rather than a side effect, that is the question to answer before the NZ$27,470 leaves your account.

Related guides on Domicila

If New Zealand's NZ$5 million is beyond the budget, or the 21 days is the feature you are shopping for, these are the comparisons that do the most work next:

• Golden visa cost comparison — every open programme priced on its current official fee table
• Cheapest golden visa — where the entry price is lowest, and what you give up for it
• Golden visa countries — which programmes are open, closed or in the middle of a rewrite
• Australia citizenship by investment cost — the nearest neighbour, and why its investor streams closed
• Singapore golden visa — the other high-threshold Asia-Pacific route, and what it really asks
• US Gold Card cost — the per-person alternative at US$1,015,000 a head
• Citizenship by investment vs golden visa — passport now, or residence first