Jacinda Ardern to ban foreign property buyers, except Australians

Super-rich foreigners, like former US TV host Matt Lauer, have snapped up New Zealand’s luxury mountain estates. But Jacinda Ardern has had enough.

Matt Lauer, top left, the former host of Today on NBC in America, obtained one of New Zealand’s most renowned mountain farms on Lake Hawea but PM Jacinda Ardern, top right, has now banned foreign buyers.

Super-rich foreigners, many of them American, rushed to buy up New Zealand’s remote mountain estates, some as boltholes to escape the doomsday they feared a Trump presidency would bring.

Now New Zealanders have had enough. Under pressure from hikers and hunters who are concerned that wealthy foreign owners have restricted access to tracts of the country’s most picturesque wilderness, the government has made it clear that absentee landowners are no longer welcome.

Within weeks parliament is expected to pass laws promised by Jacinda Ardern that will declare the nation’s homes to be “sensitive assets”, meaning that they can be sold only to residents or citizens of New Zealand. Australians will be exempt from the ban.

“New Zealanders should not be outbid for homes by wealthier foreign buyers,” David Parker, the housing minister, said.

“The price of New Zealand homes, whether it be a lakeside station, the best houses in the Bay of Islands or the most modest homes in our towns and cities should be set by local buyers, not on the international market,” a spokesman said.

His reference to “lakeside stations” refers to a string of rich Americans who have bought farms in New Zealand’s southern mountains, some for millions of dollars.

Last year Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, told The New Yorker magazine that New Zealand had become a favoured refuge for wealthy Americans in the event of a there being a cataclysm.

Among the buyers is Matt Lauer, right, the former host of the Today on NBC in America, who last year obtained one of New Zealand’s most renowned mountain farms, paying $US13 million for the lease of the 10,000 hectare Hunter Valley Station on the shores of Lake Hawea on the South Island. It is the country’s largest lake-front farm and adjoins the Mount Aspiring National Park, a world heritage area popular with climbers and hikers.

Lauer, who was dismissed by NBC from his $US25 million-a-year job in November after it was alleged that he sexually harassed female colleagues, has infuriated New Zealanders by refusing to allow people to access the adjoining national park via his property.

That put him on a collision course with the New Zealand government, which lures tens of thousands of foreign tourists annually by offering walks across the country’s wilderness areas.

Lauer has insisted that “only three or four” people have been stopped on his property but the government is under strong pressure to legalise the right of people to walk through his estate. Lauer has vowed to fight the proposal in the courts and to seek compensation.

The government of Sir John Key, who left office 19 months ago, allowed rich absentee foreigners to buy in to some of the country’s most desirable areas. They included Peter Thiel, the billionaire political activist and co-founder of PayPal who in 2015 bought a 200-hectare block in Wanaka, the area where the mountain scenes in The Lord of the Rings series were filmed.

Peter Thiel, PayPal founder-turned-venture-capitalist.

THE TIMES