Where Is NZ Property Headed? A Straight Talk With Squirrel's John Bolton

Where Is NZ Property Headed? A Straight Talk With Squirrel's John Bolton

October 08, 2026•1 min read

John Kenel sits down with John Bolton, founder of Squirrel. Squirrel is New Zealand's largest mortgage broker, writing around $3 billion of mortgages a year, and one of the country's biggest non-bank construction lenders with $700-800 million in development finance.
Between them they see the market from both sides: the buyers and the builders. This is a straight-up look at what's really happening right now.

They cover:
- Why buyer confidence is still uneven
- Why yield now matters more than easy capital gains
- The product mistakes developers keep making (and why storage matters more than people think)
- Downsizers, the overlooked opportunity
- What's happening to margins on real projects
- Why this painful part of the cycle may be clearing the way for the next one

Whether you're buying, investing or developing, it's well worth a listen.

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