What NZ’s Largest Mortgage Broker Really Sees Happening in Property Right Now

John Bolton is the founder of Squirrel, New Zealand’s largest mortgage broker doing around $3 billion in mortgages annually, and one of the country’s biggest non-bank construction lenders with $700–800 million deployed into development finance.

In this episode, John Bolton sits down with John Kenel for a straight-up conversation about what is really happening in the New Zealand property market right now.

They cover buyer confidence, yield, pre-sales, product mistakes, developer margins, down-sizers, and where the next opportunities may be setting up.

What you’ll learn:

- What Squirrel is seeing across $3 billion a year of mortgage activity

- What $700–800 million in development finance says about the state of the market

- Why buyer confidence is still uneven

- Why yield now matters more than easy capital gains

- The product mistakes developers keep making

- Why storage matters more than many people realise

- Why down-sizers are an overlooked opportunity

- What is happening to margins on real projects

- Why this painful part of the cycle may be clearing the way for the next one

If you’re building, investing, developing, or trying to make smarter decisions in property, this conversation is full of practical insight.

Sign up to my FREE monthly newsletter to improve your finances: https://johnkenel.com

Get finance for your property development with Squirrel: https://funding.johnkenel.com

Free guide to wills, trusts & passing down your wealth properly: https://wealth.thepropertydevelopmentclub.com/

Learn how to become a profitable developer in New Zealand at https://thepropertydevelopmentclub.com