New Zealand has lured Asian billionaires, Hollywood filmmakers, and tech entrepreneurs with a liberal immigration policy and light regulation of foreign property purchases. Now, as it tries to cool one of the world’s hottest housing markets, the country is banning foreigners from buying existing homes.

The Parliament approved the new restriction Wednesday, fulfilling a promise that helped Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour party win power last year after campaigning against inequality and homelessness.

In enacting the measures, New Zealand joins the U.K., Australia, Canada and others in trying to tackle an affordability crisis that has become a flashpoint political issue. Tougher lending rules, stamp duties, and taxes on vacant investment properties are among the tools that regulators and lawmakers globally have used to try to rein in runaway prices.

“This Government believes that New Zealanders should not be outbid by wealthier foreign buyers,” the trade minister, David Parker, said on Wednesday. “Whether it’s a beautiful lakeside or oceanfront estate, or a modest suburban house, this law ensures that the market for our homes is set in New Zealand not on the international market.”

Median home prices jumped 57% nationally between July 2010 and July this year, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, far outstripping wage growth. In Auckland, the largest urban center and a popular spot for Chinese investors, central-city median dwelling values are 892,000 New Zealand dollars, or about US$586,000, according to the industry group, up 84% since mid-2010. For the city as a whole, the figure has risen 85% to NZ$835,000.