Ryan Bridge: Investment is about attractive offers

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

A couple of investment-related revelations from the Government this week proves a couple of basic points about business: you've got to sell something people want, and you've got to do it at a competitive price.

Take the golden visa numbers the Government's crowing about.

The golden visa category changes are netting results. This where we give residency to wealthy foreigners, but they've got to buy their way in.

In the three months since the Government changed the rules, we've had 600 people apply via 200 applications.

The old category had 116 applications in 2 and half years!

So clearly loosening the rules, allowing property and bonds to be included as investments, and lowering the amount required, has given this visa the rocket up the jacksie it needed.

Half the applicants are American.

So you've got a bunch of wealthy American families —fed up with Trump or on the hunt for a new bolthole, whatever— and suddenly, our requirements are at least as competitive, or more competitive to similar options, and voila!

You get some wins. That's potentially $845m invested.

But what they're essentially buying is our lifestyle - they want a beautiful, safe place at the bottom of the world to call home. Or home away from home.

The numbers Seymour revealed in his press conference yesterday on overseas investment show that while we've made that process more attractive, more competitive, you've still got to have something worth selling at the end of the day.

Which in this case is an attractive investment.

You can make it as easy and hassle-free to invest here as you want but if the opportunities aren't here, if the potential for wins aren't there, the investment won't follow.

Overseas investment decisions are now being made twice as fast after Seymour's intervention, but the number of applications have gone down in the last year.

Why? Because the property market's gone kaput.

Which is not to say the process shouldn't have been simplified. But it just goes to show, if you want investment, you've got to have something attractive on offer. Right now, the lifestyle is what we've got going for us.

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