The pulling power of New Zealand's clean, green image is not lost on Chinese investors, who are looking to New Zealand's food bowl with acquisitions in mind.
Last year, Hong Kong-listed Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings Limited, a mining company rebranded, launched proceedings to buy dairy farm assets and milk-powder production plants in New Zealand. As soon as its bid failed earlier this month, another Chinese hopeful stepped up to the plate.
This followed last year's controlling share buyout of New Zealand-based milk processor Synlait Milk by Bright Dairy & Food, owned by the Shanghai municipal government. Chinese foreign direct investment is pouring into other sectors as well, including construction, following deeper economic, cultural, trade and tourism ties between the two nations.
The flow-on for real estate is that property investors seem to be following suit. Peter Thompson, managing director of Barfoot & Thompson, Auckland's biggest real estate agent, reports a significant increase in inquiries from would-be buyers in Hong Kong and the mainland.
He says the inquiry level, which has been increasing steadily for several years, has spiked in the past three months. Interest is coming from across Asia, but particularly from Hong Kong and the mainland.
Many are parents educating their children in New Zealand and who want to have a local base. Others are purely property investors for whom greener pastures beckon, as legislation introduced to cool the mainland's heated property market prevents them from buying more real estate in certain mainland cities. New Zealand remains open to foreign property ownership, and the currency exchange makes it a value proposition, Thompson says.