Moving to the Bahamas from New Zealand

Our residency index: 60/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in the Bahamas is for New Zealand citizens, based on the routes the Bahamas publishes. Realistic routes are an annually renewable residence permit for the financially self-sufficient (retirees or remote workers with offshore income) and an economic permanent residence certificate earned through property or government-bond investment.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $1M (Bahamas Economic Certificate of Permanent Residence, BSD 1,000,000 (pegged 1:1 to USD) in real estate or Central Bank zero-coupon bonds, held 10 years, effective 2025-01-01; as of June 2026)

Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.

For short visits, New Zealand passport holders can visit visa-free for up to 90 days, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold New Zealand passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Nassau

   64% match

   Est. cost

   €3,713/mo

   Avg temp

   26°C

   Safety index

   55/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Nassau is €3,713 a month. For comparison, we estimate €3,812 a month in Auckland. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

The Bahamas is in our zero or very low tax tier (little to no personal income tax); New Zealand is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in New Zealand after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Best cities to live in with zero or very low income tax
• Best places to live in the Caribbean
• Safest cities in Latin America
• Best cities with a digital nomad visa
• Best English-speaking cities to move to
• Cheapest cities to live in Latin America

• Moving to the Bahamas from the US
• Moving to the Bahamas from the UK
• Moving to the Bahamas from Canada
• Moving to the Bahamas from Australia
• Moving to the Bahamas from Ireland

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding New Zealand passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.