PHOTO: The number of homes purchased by foreign buyers has dropped year-on-year.
Real estate insiders say the foreign buyers ban hasn’t made a major dent in house prices.
Overseas buyer activity fell off a cliff in the first quarter of the year after restrictions to bar foreigners from snapping up existing homes took hold.
Home transfers to people who didn’t hold New Zealand citizenship or a resident visa fell more than 80 per cent in the March 2019 quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, Stats NZ said.
“Overseas people acquired just 0.6 per cent of homes transferred in the first quarter of 2019, reflecting law changes in late 2018 that introduced restrictions for overseas buyers,” property statistics manager Melissa McKenzie said. In those cases, none of the buyers were NZ citizens or resident-visa holders although the data excludes cases where all the buyers were corporate entities.
There were 204 home transfers to people who didn’t hold NZ citizenship or a resident visa in the March 2019 quarter versus 1,083 in the March 2018 quarter. Total home transfers fell 3.5 per cent over the same period.
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