Under the Overseas Investment Act 2005, an 'overseas person' is either:

• an individual who is neither a New Zealand citizen nor ordinarily resident in New Zealand
• an entity that is 25 percent (or more) owned or controlled by overseas persons.

'Ordinarily resident' is defined within the Act.

In Property transfer statistics when we talk about transfers to (or from) 'overseas people' we mean transfers where none of the buyers (or sellers) held NZ citizenship or resident visas. However, this definition excludes companies, resident-visa holders who were not ordinarily resident, and transfers where some of the buyers (or sellers) were overseas people but others held citizenship or resident visas.