The John Kenel Show

Can New Zealand build its way out of this slump? And what happens when AI changes how we work faster than the property market recovers?

Andrew Crosby joins me for a conversation about property, business and where New Zealand goes next. We compare how we’re actually using Claude and ChatGPT, from research and development feasibilities to travel planning, and ask what young people should be learning now.

Why are some Auckland townhouses selling below replacement cost? Why have Auckland and Hamilton had such different results over the past decade? And will new planning rules make building easier if council and infrastructure costs keep climbing?

We also look overseas, with observations from Japan, South Korea and South Africa. What could New Zealand learn from them, and where are we getting in our own way?

Along the way we get into first-home buyers, retirement villages, supermarkets, rent-to-own and the cost of living. Then we put our predictions on the record for interest rates, Auckland house prices and building costs in October 2027.

If you’re buying, building, running a business or wondering what AI means for your future, there’s plenty in this conversation to get your teeth into.

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 

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 

An election policy announced on Sunday would change how commercial leases work in New Zealand. Two parts. Rent reviews on leases already signed could go down, not just up. And if a CBD shop's been empty for more than a year, the council could give the landlord 8 weeks to find a tenant, then auction off a lease on the building.

My area is residential, so I asked someone who works with commercial leases every day. My son Alex is a commercial broker at James Group Real Estate in Auckland. We go through what a ratchet clause actually is, why banks want one, how a commercial building gets valued, what happens to that value when the rent drops, what landlords would do on the next lease, and who actually turns up to a council lease auction. Then the honest bit: why shops really sit empty, and whether any of this fills them.

Alex Kenel is an industrial property broker with James Group Real Estate, specialising in Penrose, Onehunga and Mt Wellington - the core of Auckland's industrial market. He works with owner-occupiers, landlords and tenants on leasing, sales and purchases, with a background in industrial valuation.

If you're looking at industrial property in the area, or just want a straight read on rents, values and what's actually moving, get in touch:

📞 022 369 0406

✉️ [email protected]

🔗 https://linkedin.com/in/alexkenel 

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 

More young New Zealanders are looking at the housing market and deciding the system's rigged. In plenty of ways, they're right. I've been building houses for over 20 years and I've benefited from the way things are, so I'm not here to tell anyone they're wrong to be angry.

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 

Governments around the world are talking about paying you to exist. It's called a universal basic income, and AI is the reason it's back on the table.

In this episode I look at what's actually being proposed here in New Zealand and overseas, what the real-world pilots in Finland and Ontario showed, what a land tax looks like from someone who actually holds land, and the part almost nobody talks about: what happens to the relationship between you and your government when your income and your money both come from the same place.

And then the practical bit. $370 a week is about $19,000 a year. You don't have to wait for a government to give you that. You can build it yourself.

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 

Someone commented that developers are deluded and my 695,000 home was a ripoff. Fair enough, I've heard worse. But it got me onto the argument I have nearly every day: get investors out and more Kiwis will own a home.

Partly right, but it answers the wrong question. So in this one I do something simple. I count the houses. When an investor sells a rental to a first home buyer, one household becomes an owner, and that's great, but New Zealand still has the same number of homes on the ground. The name on the title changed, the roof didn't.

I get into the 2021 interest deductibility changes, why the government quietly wanted a different kind of landlord, what build to rent really does to supply, how Australia rolls out the red carpet for big operators, and why no pre-sales means no finance, no build, and no new front door. Two questions cut through all the noise: does it help more Kiwis own a home, and does it actually create another home to live in.

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 

John Kenel sits down with John Bolton from Squirrel, New Zealand’s biggest mortgage broker.

What’s getting funded, what’s getting declined, and why?

They discuss the OCR at 2.5%, the water companies that are now a bigger development risk than councils, why 41% of apartment sellers lost money last quarter, Australia’s negative-gearing changes, and how AI is starting to change the property industry.

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

Get finance for your property development with Squirrel: https://funding.tpdc.nz/

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 

You're not falling behind because you're lazy or doing something wrong, the ground has genuinely shifted under ordinary Kiwis and nobody's bothered to explain why.

Power up 12%, council rates up 9%, insurance up 30% in three years, but the official inflation number says 3.1%.

Once you understand what's actually happening, you'll stop blaming yourself and start building a life that can't easily be pushed around.

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

Get finance for your property development with Squirrel: https://funding.tpdc.nz/

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 

The Greens are calling it a capital acquisitions tax because inheritance tax doesn't poll well, but whatever you call it, it means the government takes a third of what you've spent your life building. This isn't just a tax debate, it's a family debate. Most inheritance isn't super yachts and mansions... It's a house, a small business, a few rentals that mum and dad built by working hard, taking risks, and saving for decades.

Get finance for your property development with Squirrel: https://funding.tpdc.nz/

Sign up to my FREE weekly newsletter to improve your finances: https://newsletter.thepropertydevelopmentclub.com/yt

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 

Its time New Zealand start taking a look at Australia's tax changes and learn from them, both their mistakes and what they do well... 

Get finance for your property development with Squirrel: https://funding.tpdc.nz/

Sign up to my FREE weekly newsletter to improve your finances: https://newsletter.thepropertydevelopmentclub.com/yt

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