New Zealand · Business Investor Visa
Buy a New Zealand business, and go run it
The Business Investor Visa takes NZD $1 million into a company that already has five staff. Not a fund, not a bond. A payroll, and 184 days a year on the ground.
New Zealand opened this one in November 2025 and shut the old Entrepreneur Work Visa on the same day. It's aimed at people who have already run a company: three years of that behind you, age 55 or under, and the nerve to do it again a long way from home.
Two price tags
The second million buys speed, not an exit
There are exactly two versions of this visa, and the only thing separating them is how fast residence arrives.
Put NZD $1 million into an established New Zealand business and you can apply for the Business Investor Resident Visa after three years of running it. Put in NZD $2 million and you can apply after twelve months. Using the New Zealand dollar's mid-September 2026 value of just under 58 U.S. cents, that's roughly US$577,000 or US$1.15 million. Either way, you can buy the company outright or take a stake of at least 25 percent.
Here's the part the marketing skips. Immigration New Zealand puts conditions on the fast-track resident visa requiring you to run the business for three years anyway, across both visas. The extra million moves your residence date. It doesn't move your obligations.
What the visa asks for up front
US$577,000
Minimum into the business
NZD $1 million, standard route
US$289,000
Reserve funds on top
NZD $500,000, and it can't be the same money
184 days
In New Zealand every year
and in each of the 3 years before residence
5 staff
The business must already employ
full-time equivalent, before you buy it
The company
The business has to pass its own test first
You don't get to pick any company with a price tag. Immigration New Zealand vets the business as hard as it vets you, and plenty of obvious purchases are ruled out on sight.
The fee to file is NZD $12,380, about US$7,140, including the immigration levy. Before that money is spent, you'll be paying an accountant and a lawyer, because the file demands a Business Proposal form, a valuation from a qualified statutory accountant, financial due diligence and legal due diligence. The lawyer doing the due diligence has to be a different lawyer from your immigration one.
The list of what you can buy got longer on July 6, 2026. Franchises were barred outright at launch but are now allowed. You can buy through a New Zealand entity, and lawfully-earned gifted money now counts as your capital.
- Five years of trading behind it, and still operating lawfully
- At least 5 full-time equivalent staff on the books
- A price of NZD $1 million or more, not counting GST or the property it sits on
- A stake of 25 percent or more for you
- Not owned by you or your family, and not used in someone else's approved application in the last 10 years
Business Investor Visa
For investments. Can purchase an existing business and gain either a 3-year or 12-month to residency pathway
- Government cost
- $4,130
- Processing time
- ~180 days
- Timeline
- 4 years conditional, then permanent
- Difficulty
- Hard
About that data card
The card above needs a footnote. That 4 years is the work visa's maximum length, not a wait: residence opens at twelve months on the NZD $2 million route and at three years on the NZD $1 million one. The 180 is our rough estimate of decision time, not a target Immigration New Zealand publishes, and it's got nothing to do with the 184 days a year you owe the country. The requirements list that normally sits on that card was quoting the golden visa's thresholds, so we left it off and asked for it to be fixed.
The clock
Nine months to prove you actually bought something
The work visa runs up to four years and splits into two stages. The Establishment stage is your first twelve months, when you're supposed to buy the business you nominated and start running it.
The real deadline sits earlier. You have to send Immigration New Zealand evidence that you've purchased the business and started operating it within the first nine months. Miss that and the visa simply expires at the twelve-month mark. If the sale collapses through no fault of yours, you can swap to a different business once, and only inside the first six months.
After that comes the Operating stage, and a second set of tests for the resident visa: keep those 5 full-time equivalent jobs; create one brand new full-time job for a New Zealander and keep it going at least twelve months; keep your ownership share; keep the business solvent, and be in the country 184 days a year. If you run out of runway, there's one renewal that's worth up to two more years.
Businesses New Zealand won't count
Home-based businesses
If it runs out of a residential address, it doesn't qualify.
Dairies and discount stores
Convenience stores and $2 shops are both named and excluded.
Drop-shipping
No warehouse, no staff, no visa.
Anything an adviser sold you
Immigration advisory firms, or a business bought from a licensed adviser.
Tobacco, vaping, gambling, adult
Excluded outright, whatever the accounts look like.
Fast food outlets
Named and excluded, whatever the brand above the door.
Tax and the house
You will be a New Zealand taxpayer, and you'll be renting
Every other investor page in this country tells you how to stay out of the tax net. This one can't. At 184 days a year you cross the 183-day line, so you become a New Zealand tax resident from the start.
The softener is the transitional resident exemption. If New Zealand hasn't counted you as a tax resident for the decade before you arrive, you get roughly four years free of New Zealand tax on most foreign income, automatically and once in your life. It does nothing for the business you just bought: that income is New Zealand income and gets taxed here from day one. Companies pay a flat 28 percent, GST registration is compulsory once turnover passes NZD $60,000, and personal rates top out at 39 percent above NZD $180,000. American owners keep filing with the IRS regardless.
Then there's where you sleep. A work visa is a temporary visa, and temporary visa holders can't buy a house in New Zealand. The NZD $5 million exception that opened on March 6, 2026 was written for golden visa holders, so it doesn't reach you. You rent until the resident visa lands; even then, you need consent from the Overseas Investment Office until you've been here a full year, present for more than half of it, with a tax return to show for it.
Who reads the accounts with you
Greener Pastures
New Zealand Golden Visa
Greener Pastures works New Zealand investor residency files, and follows this one closely enough to be one of the few public sources on how little it has been used.
Simon Conn
International Mortgage Lending
Simon Conn arranges international mortgage lending covering New Zealand, which matters on the day the resident visa arrives and a house finally becomes legal for you.
Sean Novak
New Zealand Local Guide
Based in Havelock North, Sean Novak does the local-guide work: towns, schools, what a winter is really like. That matters when you're here 184 days a year, not passing through.
What buyers ask us
Will I pay New Zealand tax?
Yes. Cross 183 days in the country and New Zealand treats you as a tax resident, which 184 days a year guarantees. If you weren't one in the previous ten years, the transitional resident exemption covers most foreign income for about four years, but your New Zealand business profits are taxed here immediately at the 28 percent company rate. US citizens still file a return with the IRS.
Can a Business Investor Visa holder buy a house?
Not while you hold the work visa. It's temporary, and temporary visa holders can't buy residential or lifestyle land here. The NZD $5 million exception that opened on 6 March 2026 covers golden visa and former Investor 1 and 2 holders, not this one. Once the resident visa lands you can ask the Overseas Investment Office for consent to buy one home to live in.
Can I start a new business instead of buying one?
No. This one is for buying into a company that has already traded five years and already employs five full-time equivalent staff. The visa for starting from scratch was the Entrepreneur Work Visa, closed to new applications when this one opened in November 2025.
What does the application cost?
The visa itself is NZD $12,380, roughly US$7,140, including the immigration levy. The bigger bill is professional: an accountant's valuation, financial due diligence, and legal due diligence by a New Zealand lawyer who cannot be your immigration lawyer.
How many people have actually got this visa?
Very few. The minister projected 100 to 150 applicants in the first year. Greener Pastures told Investment Migration Insider in July 2026 that to its knowledge only one Business Investor Visa had been approved between November 2025 and March 2026, and Immigration New Zealand has published no figures since launch.
Am I too old for the Business Investor Visa?
There is a hard cutoff: you must be 55 or younger on the day you apply. You also need three years of business experience: running a business with five full-time employees or NZD $1 million in revenue, or senior management of one with five direct reports and NZD $5 million turnover. English is tested at IELTS 5.0.
How much do I have to invest in a New Zealand business?
NZD $1 million into an established business gets you a resident visa after three years of running it. NZD $2 million gets you there after twelve months. That's roughly US$577,000 and US$1.15 million. Neither counts GST or the property the business sits on, and you need another NZD $500,000 in reserve funds.
How much time do I have to spend in New Zealand?
At least 184 days a year, and you'll need that in each of the three years before you apply for residence. That's the sharpest difference from the Active Investor Plus golden visa, which asks 21 days over three years or 105 over five.
Is buying a business abroad actually your move?
Put your capital, your family and the kind of work you want to do into the Expatsi Test, and see where the arithmetic lands.
Why not you?