What does emigrating to New Zealand cost?
Answer three questions and you have an honest range for your situation. For every item you see whether it's a checked rate or an estimate. The application is hefty. But the money is mainly in the long journey across the ocean and in the car you leave behind here.
Looking for the whole route to New Zealand, not just the costs? See the steps, the order and the paperwork →
A rough indication for your situation
A few short questions, and you get a range instead of an amount. That's deliberate: an exact figure would suggest a precision nobody has.
Count on a total of
€ 17.300 – € 40.100
Where does that difference come from?
- Selling the car and buying again€ 3.000 – € 12.000
- Buffer until the first income€ 6.000 – € 12.000
Below you'll find per item where the upper and the lower limit come from.
- Aanvraag en papieren
- € 4.600 – € 5.900
- De verhuizing
- € 3.700 – € 13.700
- De eerste maanden
- € 9.000 – € 20.500
Every item, one by onePer item the amount, the source and whether it's a rate or an estimate
Aanvraag en papieren
- Resident visa application fees€ 3.300 – € 3.800
- Work visa before the residence application€ 800 – € 900
- Language test€ 250 – € 650
- Medical examination and chest X-ray(estimate)€ 150 – € 400
What you pay depends on the doctor and on the tests you need. The examination must be done by a doctor appointed by Immigration New Zealand (INZ, the immigration service): a panel physician. Those doctors set their own fees. INZ does not publish any. Everyone aged 11 and over also has a chest X-ray, which is charged separately. The range runs from a single examination to an examination with additional blood tests. Young children are structurally below it.
- Certificate of conduct (VOG), certificates and apostilles€ 70 – € 200
De verhuizing
- Flight tickets(estimate)€ 700 – € 1.700
The price depends mainly on when you book. This is a one-way flight from Amsterdam to Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, always with at least one stopover. The bottom of the range is booking far ahead outside the season. The top is booking in the New Zealand summer around the turn of the year. That is when the high season and the school holidays coincide.
- Selling the car and buying again(estimate)€ 3.000 – € 12.000
Your car stays in the Netherlands, and in New Zealand you buy a new one. New Zealand drives on the left, and a left-hand-drive car cannot in principle be registered there. There are two exceptions: twenty years or older, or one of the at most five hundred permits per year for special vehicles. They do not apply to an ordinary family car. Converting a modern car is usually unaffordable. There is also no BPM refund, because that only applies within the EU/EEA. So the car stays here, and in most places you need one again there straight away. The range runs from a cheap second-hand car to a solid family car. What your Dutch car fetches comes straight off it.
De eerste maanden
- Health insurance until you are publicly covered(estimate)€ 0 – € 1.500
Whether you pay anything here depends on your visa. You gain entitlement to publicly funded healthcare with a resident visa, or with a work visa that gives you two years or more of stay. Whoever enters on a working holiday visa depends entirely on their own policy for twelve months. INZ explicitly requires that insurance for that visa too. New Zealand is not on the list of treaty countries. So there is no CAK route and no S1 form, the arrangements that keep you insured via the Netherlands in a treaty country. So the lower limit is zero (resident visa from day one), the top end a full year of private cover.
- Bond, temporary accommodation and furnishing(estimate)€ 3.000 – € 7.000
The bond is capped. What makes this item expensive is the rest. The bond is by law at most four weeks' rent, plus at most two extra weeks as a pet bond. So that part is predictable. Without a New Zealand credit history, landlords often ask for advance payment or a guarantor. You rent temporarily first, while you get to know the neighbourhoods. And your container is six to nine weeks in transit. For that long you have to keep a house running with borrowed or bought things.
- Buffer until the first income(estimate)€ 6.000 – € 12.000
Two things make the buffer bigger here than elsewhere. You arrive with a job, but the first salary only comes after the first pay run. And as long as your employer has no completed IR330 form with your IRD number, they must withhold 45%. The IRD number is your New Zealand tax number, the IR330 the declaration of your tax code. You get that money back later, but not in the months in which you have to pay a bond, a car and household goods. Count on a few months of fixed costs before the money comes in normally.
Deliberately no amount here
Registration with your professional body
There is no amount here, because each professional body sets its own costs. A professional body is the organisation in charge of a profession. Nurses, teachers, doctors, engineers and electricians may practise their profession in New Zealand only with a registration. That registration also earns three to six points for your residence application. There is no central fee. The differences run from a few hundred euros to well over double that, sometimes with a mandatory test or placement around it. Whoever has no regulated profession (one for which this registration is compulsory) pays nothing here. Naming an amount would therefore be wrong for most people, and a shot in the dark for the rest.
And if you buy a house?
This calculation assumes renting: the first months include deposit and rent in advance.
If you buy, count on 1 to 3% of the purchase price on top of this amount. On a home of € 250,000 that's € 2.500 to € 7.500.
If you are allowed to buy, the extra costs are low: together 1 to 3% of the purchase price. New Zealand has no transfer tax and no stamp duty. What remains is the lawyer (1,500 to 3,000 dollars), a LIM report from the council and a building inspection. A LIM report is the overview of what the council knows about the property.
Note: buying isn't simply allowed here
For most emigrants: first your residence status, only then buy. The ban on the purchase of existing homes by foreign buyers ("overseas persons") applies in full. The way out is a residence class visa plus being "ordinarily resident". That means you lived in New Zealand for the last twelve months before the purchase, and were in the country for more than 183 days in those twelve months. That also makes you a tax resident there. Do you have a residence visa but not yet twelve months? Then you may buy one home to live in yourself, with prior consent from Toitū Te Whenua (LINZ), the agency that administers the Overseas Investment Act. That application costs NZ$ 2,040. In March 2026 a narrow exception was added for holders of an Active Investor Plus or Investor visa, for homes above five million dollars. Australians and Singaporeans fall outside the ban.
An order of magnitude based on averages, not a quote. The real amounts depend on your occupation, your route, the season and dozens of choices you still have to make.
Rates checked on 16 August 2026.
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From range to your own budget
The calculator above works with three questions, but the journey itself has more. In Vertrekklaar the same model calculates with your real situation: how many family members, which household contents, which visa. It also watches the deadlines that work against each other. A one-off € 499, no subscription.
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Every step on one list, free
Not ready to start yet? Then you get the departure checklist for New Zealand: every step in order, to print and tick off. With it, five mails in a week and a half about the pitfalls and the real costs. If the rules for New Zealand change, you'll hear about it. After that we ask once where your plans stand, send one offer, and now and then one thing that fits your moment. No newsletter, and you can switch it off at any time.
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