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Speaker 1: Afternoon, The government's finally made its long awaited announcement on

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Speaker 1: foreigners being able to buy houses here. Foreign investors who

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Speaker 1: invest five million dollars will now also be allowed to

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Speaker 1: buy one house that costs five million dollars or more.

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Speaker 1: Erica Stanford is the Immigration mini stand with us.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Erica, good afternoon. How are you.

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Speaker 1: I'm well? Thank you? So why five million?

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Speaker 2: We wanted to make sure that the investment in the

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Speaker 2: housing market wasn't going to cause any problems for first

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Speaker 2: home buyers or skew the market. And I think a

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Speaker 2: five million was a good figure because it represents only

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Speaker 2: the very top one percent, and so it means that

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Speaker 2: these people can come settle in New Zealand, get used

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Speaker 2: to the landscape, spend more money here, but also not

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Speaker 2: skew the property market, which is what we wanted to avoid.

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Speaker 1: How many houses have we got in the country worth

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Speaker 1: five million or more?

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Speaker 2: Well, it's one percent of the market, and I did

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Speaker 2: I could. I heard the number today and I forgot

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Speaker 2: what it was. But it's one percent of whatever that

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Speaker 2: figure is, and I'll see if I can look it

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Speaker 2: up while I'm talking to you.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciated how many investors. Do you reckon

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Speaker 1: we'll be attracted as a result.

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Speaker 2: Well, I know the three hundred have already put their

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Speaker 2: applications and many of them will be keen to have

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Speaker 2: a house here. Not all of them immediately, but many

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Speaker 2: of them will. I'm expecting that this will mean we

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Speaker 2: will get more applications. I know that when I've talked

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Speaker 2: to lawyers and immigration agents that've said that they've got

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Speaker 2: people who are interested, but the house buying thing was

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Speaker 2: a problem. So I'm expecting we'll start to see a

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Speaker 2: little uptick in applications. We've seen a we saw a

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Speaker 2: huge surge at the beginning. It has tailed off now

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Speaker 2: and I expect we'll see another, maybe not the same

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Speaker 2: surge as we saw at the beginning, but I think

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Speaker 2: we'll see an uptick. So I'm expecting, you know, another

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Speaker 2: couple of hundred this year.

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Speaker 1: This was it seems like it was a really hard

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Speaker 1: negotiation in cabinet, was it?

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Speaker 2: It actually wasn't. And look, I think Winstone has been

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Speaker 2: on the record over the fast past few weeks saying

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Speaker 2: that you know, he wanted to get this done, but look,

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Speaker 2: some things take a little bit of time. I wasn't

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Speaker 2: part of the negotiations.

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Speaker 1: But if it wasn't such a hard negotiation, why is

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Speaker 1: it taking you guys two years to do it.

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Speaker 2: Well. Firstly, we only bought the AIP visa in April

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Speaker 2: this year and it really only had surged numbers in

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Speaker 2: the last couple of months. So up until then, the

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Speaker 2: previous settings that Labor put in place weren't attracting the

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Speaker 2: levels of migrants that we've seen, so it wasn't it

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Speaker 2: wasn't really an issue until the last couple of months

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Speaker 2: where we've seen these three hundred applications with others waiting

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Speaker 2: to put the application in. So it's only been a

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Speaker 2: more recent issue that we've started to talk about.

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Speaker 1: All Right, hey, thank you for your time. As always,

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Speaker 1: Eric Stanford, Immigration Minister. For more from Heather Duplassy Allen Drive,

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