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Comment by foobarbazetc | Hacker News Reader

I just want to know how he's getting into NZ since the border is closed to non-citizens and people who can't prove existing residency.

Asking for a friend, who's me, also trying to move to NZ. :)

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There are exceptions for the rich and famous, of course. [1]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-newzea...

NZer here. Why would you want to move here? Everything is expensive, the houses are made of cardboard, and local opportunities are extremely limited.

NZer here. Everything is expensive, there are some good houses, and local opportunities don't matter if you have your own business or work remotely for a US company (I've done both). With the right remote job you get paid enough to not worry about the expense. And NZ rocks: sane politics, great environment. And if you live in Auckland: great weather, diverse, great food.

Half-agree. I'm a returned expat of a couple of years ago, and we came back primarily for the kids. It's expensive and the consumer choice is going to be a shock for most Americans, that's true. And I wouldn't have done it if I couldn't work remotely for a US company. But with that as an option, all the moreso now, it's still a good place to raise a family if you can finance it.

I really wish it were easy to do this as a non-citizen.

Easy: There's no capital gains tax. If a large portion of your wealth consists of stock options (which I'd assume Urs' is, given that he was employee #8 at Google), it means more money for you, while living in a beautiful place. Expensive doesn't matter, nor does construction materials used in (poor people's non-custom-built) housing, and definitely not the local job market.

NZ also has universal healthcare. For anybody tired of the US healthcare "system" (what we have doesn't deserve to be called a system), that's very attractive even if you're not wealthy. Especially not if you're wealthy.

But Urs is a US tax resident for life now, US doesn’t let you become non-resident. So he will continue to owe capital gains in the US and if he becomes NZ resident that doesn’t change. But he will then owe NZs higher tax rates on his regular income and other things too (like foreign financial arrangements which can get messy).

Edit: IANAtaxL but NZ does have a pretty sweet deal where new residents get to not pay tax on overseas income for four years. So Urs could come in for four years. Then if he maintains a permanent home in the US that is always available to him (not rented) a tax expert might argue he is dual resident and under the dual tax agreement would tie break to the US so doesn’t owe tax in NZ on his US income, which would be all of his income. So this is probably what he would do. It’s a pretty sweet deal, I don’t think it’s fair you basically don’t pay tax to NZ under that arrangement if your income is overseas and you can afford to leave a house unrented.

> There's no capital gains tax

Wouldn't you still pay US tax as a green card holder or citizen? After decades in the US would be surprising if he wasnt.

(And even if not, does the US have an exit tax when giving back green card or passport?)

What you describe only affects citizens (but surely he's a citizen by now). Edit to add: and green card holders who had their green card for 8+ years without naturalizing. The green card would generally be voided by moving to NZ for a year; it might help get away with _future_ appreciation of assets but of course not any _past_ appreciation.

There’s an exit tax that applies to long-term green card holders and people who give up their citizenship.

You're right, I'll amend to mention this edge case.

Gains are taxed as income though - does that happen in the US? I always thought that even with capital gains tax you kept more of your investment money there than here.

Yes: in the US, long-term capital gains (i.e. an asset you have owned for more than a year) are taxed at a significantly lower rate than income. Short-term cap gains are treated as income.

Its a safe stable government, surrounded by water with plenty of nature with a temperate climate.

If you can afford to move here you can afford the overpriced housing marketing and food costs.

If you have near-infinite money this is a great place to live.

When you say opportunities are extremely limited - is it in general or in IT specifically ?

I’m planning to move to NZ soon and would love to hear more about the IT market.

The IT market is essentially non-existent outside the main centres (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch), and of those only Christchurch approaches affordable (mostly as a consequence of its recent shakiness).

I haven't been there in a decade, but back in ~2010 I remember it being slightly cheaper than American, and noticeably cheaper than Australia. Have things changed?

Been looking at housing in Wellington past couple of months. All but one of the houses we looked at were very old, never insulated, often pretty terrible places with few updates over their life. They were all 1.3-1.5m NZD for approximately 120-160 sqm. So think something like ~1m USD for ~1400sqft that then needs 200k USD to bring it up to US standards for insulation, to make it healthy and ensure your kids don’t get asthma, etc. I really can’t express the kind of miserable shape most of these houses were in. In the US many would be just sold as tear downs and replaced with something new.

The market here would in all normal respects be a bubble with average house prices now over 12x the average wage. The most unaffordable in the OECD I think. But the problem is the only thing NZers put their money into is housing. It’s treated as an investment where the goal is to build equity then use that to get the next house etc. This has been supported with very very low tax rates on property and no CGT on sales. (You pay a pathetic 0.25% tax on your property in Auckland.) On top of this poor policies have lead to not building enough housing for the growing population. So it’s unclear how it will resolve but it’s adding a lot of stress to the society, as half the population face a bleak future of housing insecurity and handing over most of their wages to live in bad conditions.

It is never the right time to buy and few years later, after the market took 25%, you are like "We did a good move back in the day!".

Bought my house 2 years ago (Auckland) and it is pretty good conditions (for NZ) with (almost) no isolation, windows that I have never seen in France, and a door which giant gaps at the bottom! And yeah, 1m+ $NZD... Hopefully the "prices double every 10 years in Auckland" trend will continue (we have some room for the interest rates to be lower...).

Good luck for Wellington mate !

Agreed, in the same way that "it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you," in this case "it's not a bubble if the skyrocketing prices have a real foundation" -- in this case, a severe shortage of supply that is not forecast to improve.

It's not even a good investment when it comes to one's primary home. So your property went up 60% in ten years -- so did the one you'll have to buy if you sell it.

The newspapers abound with stories of houses that earnt more in a year than their occupants did.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/1256918...

Long story short: if you want a three bedroom house, a garage, a little bit of garden, perhaps a view? A million bucks. Roughly twelve times average wage.

Housing prices don't ever stop here, a lack of CGT and aggressively lending banks means a very unhealthy amount of capital ends up in residential real-estate.

My wife and I bought a 1950s, 5 bedroom house 30 minutes north of Christchurch for $520K in 2018. Estimated market price is now $640K. Not bad capital gains in two years... ...not that we're selling until some kids move out of home.

Prices have also been pushed up by expats with considerable purchasing power fleeing Covid, and supply that is very far behind demand.

There was something like 1 million Kiwis living overseas before Covid, which is 20% of the population here.

Our IT market is absolutely starving for people. The problem is, local companies don't pay very much. They consider a 150K NZD a good salary.

You can make twice that if you get a job doing similar work remotely for a US company; I used to, and I meet a lot of people who do. Nobody knows how many people are doing this, but it's a lot and growing.

I think our local companies might not realize they're competing in a global labour market now and need to pay accordingly.

> They consider a 150K NZD a good salary.

In 2020 when I was looking for a senior dev position, 120k ($83K US) was considered a good salary. Though I didn't have a network or a specialization, which hurt me.

> You can make twice that if you get a job doing similar work remotely for a US company; I used to, and I meet a lot of people who do. Nobody knows how many people are doing this, but it's a lot and growing.

Any tips for how to break into the US market?

> Any tips for how to break into the US market?

Most people I know doing this have a network, but there are companies that would probably interview you without a referral. In particular fully-remote companies like Zapier and Gitlab would be good bets. (I don't know if Gitlab pays global salaries, but Zapier definitely does.)

Better the Shire than Gondor.

In most countries the minister responsible for border control will have wide discretion about who is allowed in and out.

This means that if you’re politically well connected it can be trivial to get the necessary approvals. But for everyone else it will be extremely difficult, especially for countries like Australia and NZ which have very low vaccination rates.

Here in NZ that would be considered corruption - likely resulting scandal if discovered.

We do have an out for very rich people who want to invest here (Peter Thiel abused this to get NZ citizenship from our previous right wing govt, there has been a lot of shouting about this)

Is your friend a FAANG exec? If not, I am sorry.

Even FAANG exec's aren't allowed in, last time I checked. NZ doesn't care about that sort of thing. Only if you have $$$ to put in somewhere.

But maybe things got loosened up a little bit lately, pre-Delta, plus we don't know where Urs has citizenship.

> Only if you have $$$ to put in somewhere.

Which FAANG execs do

>NZ doesn't care about that sort of thing.

Are we thinking of the same NZ?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/covid-19-coronavirus-wea...

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446151/border-exemptions...

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