Even before George W. Bush's second election victory heightened many Americans' interest in seeking pastures new, Corie Brown wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times about why Californians were moving to New Zealand.
For the first time in New Zealand history, Americans are snapping up not just vineyard land but all manner of real estate, from modest beach houses to Auckland office towers. Hotels, forests and dairy farms are giving way to American-style vacation resorts, housing developments and palatial estates.
During the past five years Americans have been involved in nearly 40% of the total foreign investment in New Zealand, or roughly 100 significant investments a year, according to government records.
"It's the beginning of a wave," says U.S. Ambassador Charles Swindells, noting that the country has "a quality of life you can't duplicate in the States." These are individuals, not corporate interests, he points out. "This is not going to be the next Silicon Valley. There is no manufacturing base here at all."
With a San Francisco vibe, New Zealand's capital is a pleasing jumble of cutting-edge architecture and Victorian storefronts clustered around a harbor teeming with commercial fishing vessels and a fleet of single-masted sailboats. Every Kiwi seems to own one. Fewer than 500,000 people live in the Wellington area, with many in the houses densely packed on the city's rolling hills.
At night, the downtown streets are alive with people strolling among the dozens of cafes, restaurants, theaters and clubs. The absence of a street-wise hustle or a sense of urban danger is as remarkable as the variety of cuisines.
New Zealand's Government is more than happy with the numbers of Californians arriving. "What we're seeing now is the decision to come here to live and make substantive high-end investments," says Prime Minister, Helen Clarke, adding, "We're quite happy about that."
She is selling New Zealand as a place to live, particularly to Californians, in a first-ever marketing effort launched this year in the U.S. "It's active recruitment," she says. "There is an appreciation [here] that they have the skills we need in New Zealand. They have a lifestyle compatible with ours. And," she notes in a confident tone, "California is in the down part of an economic cycle."
New Zealand is a new country "building its modern identity today," says Glenn Schaeffer, president of Las Vegas' Mandalay Resort Group and a part-time New Zealand resident who is developing a vineyard down the road from the Stowes in the hills above Nelson.
"They have a socialist temperament that every bloke is as good as the next one," he says. But from an investment standpoint, "it's the Switzerland of the South Seas. Great judicial system, fair and transparent markets, and an export economy. Anything you touched in New Zealand in the last three years went up. Anything," he states emphatically.
There is no ideal American, says New Zealand Minister of Immigration Lianne Dalziel*, but it's the "American entrepreneurial spirit" that the government wants to attract, noting that trades people and professionals are in demand as well as the moneyed class of investors.
Someone who wants to cash out Los Angeles real estate to buy an oceanfront home in Wellington and still have enough money left over to start a new business? "Yes," Dalziel says. "We can't compete with salary levels in the U.S. But our cost of living is significantly lower."
Editor's Note: We used to link from here to the full LA Times article but it is no longer available.
*Lianne Dalziel was Minister of Immigration when the article was written.
