đ§Â Due to some scheduled maintenance, our mortgage application will be offline tonight from 10pm âtil 8am tomorrow (Tuesday). Thanks for your patience, and you can continue browsing our website to your heartâs content in the meantime!
10 May 2021
To get a deposit up to 20% in todayâs housing market takes years. Itâs a common story. You can afford to take on a mortgage but the bank wonât let you. KÄinga Ora isnât an option for higher earners due to income caps and house price caps. It just isnât fair, right? We saw a gap, so we're filling it.
01 April 2021
On March 23 the government surprised everyone with some draconian changes in the ability of property investors to deduct interest expenses when calculating their tax obligations. Will we really see big changes which could stop house prices rising for an extended period as the government would like? No.
25 March 2021
Newsroomâs Alexia Russell sat down with Chief Squirrel JB to chat about what the Government's recent announcement means for first home buyers. Does it remove the stumbling blocks, or is it still hard as ever for young Kiwis to get onto the property ladder? Are there going to be any unintentional consequences?
15 March 2021
We all know that the residential real estate markets all around New Zealand have been rampant since just after the middle of last year. We've been here before and none of the 'remedies' seem to have prevented prices from rising at pace.
19 February 2021
The last time 40% deposits for investors were introduced, Auckland house prices had been soaring for four years. This time, we're only a year into the current frenzied house price cycle, and interest rates are much lower than they were. So how much impact will reintroducing the rule have?
04 February 2021
Economy expert Tony Alexander discusses the latest results from his surveys of mortgage advisers and real estate agents, plus how a change in LVR restrictions will affect New Zealand's housing market.
22 December 2020
Most of us store a large part of our wealth in property. It could be in our owner-occupied home, a holiday house or an investment portfolio. And a large number of property owners are starting to head towards retirement.
11 December 2020
Each month I run a survey with the REINZ of real estate agents all around New Zealand, asking them what they are seeing. My latest survey, which yielded a good 369 responses, shows that FOMO, fear of missing out, remains as strong as ever.
19 November 2020
Whilst low interest rates are a major catalyst for increasing house prices, it fundamentally comes down to a supply side issue that many countries havenât solved, including New Zealand.
26 October 2020
I started writing this property-focussed column for Squirrel Mortgages back in June this year. If youâve been reading it from then you'll still be surprised like I am that housing markets around the country are so strong, but not as surprised as those who haven't had the chance to read it.
11 August 2020
One of the advantages which existing home owners have over first home buyers is experience. They have learnt that as a rule there is no âbestâ time to buy property and it is wise to simply get on with it as soon as one is comfortable with the debt to be taken on, and then manage changes along the way.
10 August 2020
As I've eluded to over the past few months, I've expected house prices to stay reasonably stable, especially entry-level properties. However, there will be pockets of the market that are hit harder, and one of the segments is apartments.