Potential for foreign buyers to push up property prices in wealthy hotspots

A law change, which allows golden visa holders investing five-million dollars or more in the country to buy a home, was passed by Parliament under urgency late on Friday.

The property must be worth five-million or more - meaning buyers will have a pool of less than one percent of all properties in the country.

Most of those homes are in Auckland and Queenstown - and Treasury found it could lead to some properties just shy of the five-million dollar cap rising in value.