New Zealand Investor Visa: The True Cost, and Can the Capital Come Back?

What the government actually charges

Immigration New Zealand publishes a single figure: from NZD 27,470. It combines the visa application charge and the immigration levy, and covers the principal applicant, partner and dependent children aged twenty-four and under in one application. The threshold itself does not increase with family size, so a family of four pays the same government charge as a single applicant.

Two honest caveats. The figure is published as a "from" price, so treat it as a floor. And Immigration New Zealand does not publish the split between the application charge and the levy, nor whether any per-dependant charge applies. Where a number is not published, we mark it rather than estimate it, our cost calculator excludes the per-dependant charge from the total entirely rather than assuming it is zero.

Later in the process, the permanent resident visa costs from NZD 315, with eighty per cent decided within two weeks. If you also buy a home under the NZD 5m pathway, Overseas Investment Office consent is NZD 2,040 or NZD 3,500 depending on the case.

The investment is not a cost

This distinction matters more than it sounds. In a Caribbean citizenship programme, the contribution is spent: it goes to a government fund and does not come back. In New Zealand, the NZD 5,000,000 or NZD 10,000,000 is capital you continue to own, deployed into businesses, funds, bonds or developments. It can grow. It can also fall.

Treating the two as equivalent is the most common analytical error we see. A NZD 5m investment and a USD 250,000 contribution are not points on the same scale; they are different instruments. If you want a direct comparison of what each delivers, the Mirabello Investment Migration Index scores both on the same seven dimensions.

The professional envelope nobody publishes

This is where advisory pages go quiet, and it is the part that is genuinely variable. Expect costs across five categories:

• Legal and immigration advisory, the application itself, structuring and correspondence with Immigration New Zealand.
• Source-of-funds evidence, the heaviest workstream for most applicants. You must demonstrate lawful ownership and the origin of the funds, which for an operating business or a long investment history can mean substantial accounting work.
• Fund management and investment administration, ongoing, and a real drag on net return over a three or five-year hold.
• Translation and notarisation, scales with the number of documents and jurisdictions involved.
• Medical examinations and police certificates, for every included family member, from each country lived in for twelve months or more in the past decade.

We do not publish a headline figure for these because an honest one does not exist: an applicant with a single salaried income source and one nationality is a fundamentally different piece of work from a founder with a twenty-year corporate history across three jurisdictions. We will quote against your actual position rather than an average.

Can the capital come back?

This is the question searched most often in Chinese and answered least often in English, so let us be precise about what is known.

The immigration position is clear

The obligation is to invest and maintain the qualifying amount for the full term: thirty-six months under Growth, sixty under Balanced. Immigration New Zealand monitors this with a questionnaire at twenty-four months and again at the end of the period. Up to twenty-five per cent may sit in on-call bank accounts or term deposits during the term.

Once the term is complete, the presence requirement met and the permanent resident visa granted, the investment conditions are discharged. At that point the capital is no longer being held for immigration purposes. There is no requirement to keep it in New Zealand to retain permanent residence.

The commercial position is the real one

Here is the part that matters, and it has nothing to do with immigration law. Whether you can actually retrieve the money depends entirely on what you bought.

Immigration New Zealand describes Growth-category investments as higher-risk and typically illiquid. That is the regulator's own language, and it is doing real work. Direct investments in private New Zealand businesses, venture capital, private equity and fund-of-funds structures do not convert to cash because an immigration condition expired. They convert when there is a buyer, a distribution or a fund wind-up. A three-year immigration term and a seven-year private-equity fund life are not the same clock.

Balanced-category assets, bonds, listed equities, are materially more liquid. That is a large part of what the additional NZD 5,000,000 is buying, as we set out in our guide to Growth versus Balanced.

So the honest answer is: the immigration lock comes off on a known date; the commercial lock comes off when your assets allow. Anyone who tells you the capital is simply returned at the end of the term is describing a deposit scheme, and this is not one.

What about tax when the money moves?

New Zealand has no exit tax, no wealth tax and no inheritance or estate tax, and it does not tax the return of your own capital. What may be taxable is any gain, and that depends on what you held and how long: New Zealand has no comprehensive capital gains tax, but the bright-line rule taxes residential property sold within two years, and the foreign investment fund rules reach offshore holdings.

The timing point most advisers miss is that the transitional resident exemption on foreign income runs up to forty-eight months, which is shorter than the Balanced term and barely longer than the Growth one. We cover that in our guide to the four-year exemption and what follows it. This is general information and not tax advice; the position depends on your residence, your assets and your home country's rules, and should be taken with a qualified adviser in both jurisdictions.

Sources

Fees, investment terms, monitoring and the on-call allowance: Immigration New Zealand. Tax residency, the transitional exemption and the bright-line rule: Inland Revenue. Read 18 September 2026. Full requirements on our New Zealand programme page; compare routes on the residency by investment hub.