Juwai head of Australia New Zealand Jane Lu says the campaign enourages Chinese buyers to "act now before it's too late".

New Zealand properties will be pushed by Chinese real estate website Juwai.com to beat a planned foreign investor ban by the Government.

An advertising campaign would run during December focused "solely on New Zealand" and involve 40 New Zealand real estate agents.

Juwai has more than two million monthly users looking at properties in 89 countries.

Spokesman Dave Platter said the adverts would highlight that a foreign buyer ban could soon be imposed by the New Zealand Government.

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"It will say that this is the situation in New Zealand, so if you've been planning to buy there in the next six to eight months then you should probably start talking to an agent now."

123RF An ad campaign on Chinese website Juwai is warning foreign buyers they don't have time to waste if they want a house in New Zealand.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford said the adverting campaign "just confirms the need to lock-out overseas speculators and stop them driving up house prices.

"The housing market needs to be about delivering warm, affordable homes for New Zealanders, not profits to overseas speculators."

Twyford said that was why the Government was moving quickly to stop people who did not have the right to live here from buying houses.

"For nine years, National did nothing about this problem," he said.

The Government would present a law within its first 100 days in office to ban foreign buyers from buying existing homes, he said.

New Zealand was the fifth most popular country in the world for Chinese buyers for two years, but in 2017 fell to sixth place, after Thailand went from sixth to third place.

123RF New Zealand is the sixth most popular country for Chinese buyers.

Juwai head of Australia and New Zealand Jane Lu said the most popular city for Chinese buyers in New Zealand was Auckland, followed by Christchurch, Wellington, Queenstown and Hamilton.

Land Information New Zealand data found as few as 3 per cent of all property purchases were foreign buyers.

Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, told Stuff the data only captured people buying properties that they were not going to live in and on people's tax residency, which was less stringent than Labour's proposed permanent residency or citizenship proposal.

"The genuine proportion of foreign buyers is probably higher than these figures, although how much we don't really know."

Platter said people had a lot of "questions and anxiety" about the Government's plan to ban foreign buyers from buying residential or farmland properties.

"We're talking about your typically family, people thinking about moving to New Zealand or having someone come over to study or who like visiting New Zealand or maybe think one day they retire there," Platter said.

"It's not usually just for mercenary investment goals, it's usually some sort of family goal as well."

Lu said the policy change has "activated" Chinese buyers.

"These buyers previously took their time in researching their transaction and want to act now before it is too late."



Lu said it could be hard in China to get information about New Zealand properties.

"Compared to USA and Australia, fewer Kiwi developers and agents are selling in China.



"The goal is to help Chinese buyers and New Zealand property marketers and vendors find each other."

Lu said the campaign could be appealing to vendors affected by cooling house prices in Auckland.