Read Time: 4 minutes
Real case: They owned a property through a company and still qualified as first-home buyers.
They kept the investment property in their company.
They didn’t sell it.
And still got their KiwiSaver approved for their first home.
Two of our clients—separate couples, same scenario — were renting but had invested in a residential property a few years earlier.
It was owned by a Look-Through Company (LTC), which they both directed and held shares in.
Now, they wanted to buy a home to live in. But like most first-time buyers, they needed their KiwiSaver to make it happen.
“Our names have never been on a property title.
The company owns the rental, and we’ve never lived in it.
Can we still use our KiwiSaver to buy our first home?”
That’s when things can get tricky.
Most KiwiSaver providers s will say "No" because they already own an interest in land.
Here’s how we overcame that roadblock.
If we didn’t structure this right, they could
Under Clause 8 of Schedule 1 of the KiwiSaver Act 2006, you can’t have previously held an estate in land before to qualify for a first home withdrawal.
If a company (even one you own) holds legal title to the property — and you’ve never lived in it — you may still qualify.
The FSC Guide, section 1B.4, confirms this. Skip to the screenshot below.
Yet most KiwiSaver providers don’t have a checkbox for “owns through a company but doesn’t live there.”
You need to spoon-feed the context.
And get their explicit consent.
If you don’t get their consent, you can be fined up to $300,000 for misleading information:
We created a KiwiSaver Approval Pack the provider couldn’t say no to.
Before submitting anything formally, we emailed the provider with:
We also explicitly asked:
“Can you please confirm in writing that the clients’ ownership of property via [LTC Name] Ltd does not disqualify them from a first home withdrawal under Schedule 1?”
This letter is now our template for these situations.
We gave the provider the option to request:
We waited until the provider formally confirmed approval before going unconditional on the purchase.
No guessing.
No crossing fingers at settlement.
Both sets of clients received full KiwiSaver withdrawals.
Neither had to sell their rental.
✅ Owning property via a company doesn’t automatically disqualify clients from KiwiSaver
🧠 The trick is proving they never held an estate in land themselves
📥 We've got the exact email wording and checklist that unlocked provider approval
