By
Christopher Tkaczyk, Travel+Leisure
Anyone looking to buy a vacation home may want to consider New Zealand. It’s only an easy 13-hour flight from Los Angeles, after all.
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Auckland has replaced Toronto as
the most popular luxury market for wealthy individuals who are looking
to buy a second home, according to a report
from Christie’s International Real Estate. The main reason? New
Zealand's strong economy and job growth has spurred immigration as well
as a deluge of investments by foreigners and expats looking for a second
home. Sales of million dollar homes in Auckland have tripled over the
past three years.
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| Courtesy of Christie's International Real Estate |
The study looked at more than 100 markets worldwide, where the average starting price for a luxury property is $2.2 million.
Auckland also happens to be one of the cheapest cities for properties valued at more than $1 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, the price per square foot for a recent luxury listing worth more than $1 million
was just $385. At the other end of the spectrum, the average price per
square foot in Monaco is more than $4,000, making the French Riviera
principality the world’s most expensive place to buy a home.
[post_ads]Another reason that New Zealand
is so popular with the jet set: it has no capital gains tax or visa
requirements. That means international buyers have been flooding the
market in the past year, causing sales of luxury properties to grow by
63%.
To prevent a potential housing
bubble, the local government has enacted a law that requires investors
who sell properties without holding them for at least two years to pay a
flipping tax. But so far, New Zealand has not targeted overseas buyers
for additional taxation, even though fears of an influx of Chinese
buyers prompted the government to begin collecting identifying
information on non-resident buyers last October.
“While nothing has been ruled
out, we are not actively pursuing any further property taxes at this
time,” a spokesman for New Zealand’s Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse
told the Journal.
New Zealand has also seen increased tourism in recent years, and one small town has so many available jobs that it began offering incentives for skilled workers to move there.
