John Kenel

03/08/2026

A new $12,500 per dwelling cost has just been added to new properties here.

By a board we the public don't choose to elect...

If your building consent in Waikato was lodged on or after July 1st 2026 there's a new $500/year 'Water Supply & Wastewater Growth Charge' coming your way for the next 25 years.

On top of your existing council development chargers, water bills, waste water bills and rates...

Not exactly making it easier to build more houses and increase the supply

02/08/2026

Kiwis are saving more and spending less. On the surface, that reads as good news.

But people don't build a buffer when everything feels settled.

They build one when they sense things can turn.

Card spending is weak, business activity is soft, and the cost of living is still working through household budgets.

When families pull back, small businesses feel it first.

Cafés get quieter, shops sell less, builders field fewer enquiries, and tradies hear "maybe next month."

Saving is sensible, and everyone should have something put aside.

But when a whole country starts holding onto its money at the same time, that tells you something.

It isn't confidence. It's a warning light.

The real question isn't whether Kiwis are saving.

It's why they feel they need to.

02/08/2026

Week 3 at Aurora Terrace. The front three units are ready for their floor slabs. Cut, filled, rolled and compacted.

Doesn’t look like much. But everything from here sits on top of it.
The back two are next.

Five new homes going up next to Waikato University. From bare dirt to finished homes.

02/08/2026

New Zealand should have some of the cheapest electricity in the world.

Most of our generation is hydro, geothermal and wind. Once the dams are built, the fuel is largely free.

Yet Consumer NZ's new report shows household electricity costs have risen around 177% since 1999, nearly twice the rate of inflation, and roughly 65% more expensive in real terms even after wage growth.

The human side is worse than the numbers. A quarter of households struggled to pay their power bill last year. 41% went without heating. One in five went to bed early to save money.

We already have the generation and the infrastructure. Yet somewhere between generation, the network, the market and the final bill, the system isn't delivering. Competition was supposed to bring prices down. The opposite happened for households.

That's not a small problem. That's a system problem, and it's worth understanding before anyone proposes the next fix.

01/08/2026

A Sydney auctioneer with 30 years in the game has now gone two Saturdays running without a single registered bidder.

Not without a sale. Without anyone even registering to bid.

Sydney’s wider auction clearance rate has also dropped into the low 40s. Buyers think prices will fall further, sellers still want yesterday’s price, and investors are trying to work out what happens next.

So everybody waits.

That is how a housing market seizes up. It hits agents, mortgage brokers, tradies, government revenue and eventually any owner who genuinely needs to sell.

The warning for New Zealand is simple: governments can change property rules overnight. Once they break confidence, getting it back takes a bloody long time.

01/08/2026

A strong country should measure success by how many people don't need a government payment.

Opportunity deserves some credit. Their land tax plan at least tries to replace a welfare system they say is broken. They would swap most benefits for a Citizen's Income of up to $370 a week for almost every adult, funded by a tax on land, arguing it cuts bureaucracy and ensures more work always pays. Those are fair points.

But it's worth asking a bigger question. Why is the answer still a new tax and a payment for nearly everyone? Why isn't the goal to bring down the costs that create dependency in the first place, housing, power and food, along with the barriers that make productive work harder?

This isn't about abandoning people who are sick, disabled or genuinely struggling. A safety net matters. But success shouldn't be measured by how efficiently we put nearly every adult on a payment. It should be measured by how many people don't need one.

To me, this doesn't reduce dependency. It spreads it, and taxes land to pay for it.

31/07/2026

We collected billions selling New Zealand assets, then watched decades of profits follow them offshore.

selling an asset isn't automatically stupid. Sometimes private ownership brings better management and fresh investment.

but a government gets the sale money once. That means we get it once. The new owner gets the profit year after year after year.

Telecom. Rail. The power companies. Same story every time.

selling the family silver is the easy part. Explaining how you'll replace the income it produced is the part they always leave out.

30/07/2026

Try this thought experiment.

Imagine every rental in New Zealand got sold to its tenant tomorrow. Every single one.

Here’s what changes: the name on the title.

Here’s what doesn’t: the number of houses.

And let me concede the fair point first, because it’s real. Some renters would become owners. That matters to those families and I’m not pretending it doesn’t. Ownership policy can genuinely do that.

But now count the houses.

Same number of homes. Same number of people needing one. The family in the emergency motel is still in the motel. Not one new bedroom exists anywhere in the country.

That’s the bit that gets skipped every time someone says the fix for housing is getting rid of investors. Moving a house from one owner to another is a transfer. It’s not a build.

We keep having a fight about who should own the houses we’ve got, when the actual problem is we haven’t got enough of them.

You can’t shuffle away a shortage. You can only build your way out of one.

I’ve just put out a full episode walking through this properly, numbers and all. Link in the comments.

30/07/2026

A bloke called Peter left a comment on my last podcast. “You developers are deluded. 695,000 is a rip-off. You need a bankruptcy lesson.”

Fair enough, mate. I’ve heard worse.

But it got me thinking about the argument I have nearly every day. Get the investors out and more Kiwis will own homes. So my new podcast takes that argument seriously and runs one simple test. Count the houses.

Where the count lands surprised even some landlords I know.

Watch on YouTube or listen in Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Someone commented that developers are deluded and my 695,000 home w...

30/07/2026

Housing didn't reward the hardest workers. It rewarded the earliest buyers.

New US research shows the millennial generation has effectively split into two economies.

Older millennials bought early, built equity, and are now among the biggest buyers in the American market.

Younger millennials face a real ownership rate of about 22% according to one Federal Reserve study, and 1 in 3 adults under 35 now live with their parents.

The detail that matters: 70% of them are employed. This isn't a work ethic problem.

Wages simply couldn't keep pace with house prices, and the group that bought before prices ran away pulled permanently ahead of the group that didn't get the chance.

We're watching the same divide open here in New Zealand. Young people doing everything right and watching the starting line move further away.

You can't work your way through a housing shortage. You have to build your way out of it.