Mike Israel is at the forefront of a trend that some reckon could disrupt the very lucrative business of lending money to consumers and businesses. An information technology worker in his 50s, Israel is one of a growing number of people pocketing a piece of the major banks' healthy profits, by lending their savings directly to borrowers and charging interest.

Bank profits have retreated from record levels, but experts say they could well be back to their record highs later this year. KPMG's latest Financial Institutions Performance Survey found the banking sector made a net profit of $1.15 billion in the December quarter, down from a record $1.25b in September.

Learn how to find heavily discounted and high cash flow deals, then use Xero to maximise the ongoing success of your property portfolio. In this webinar we covered all three strategies in detail to show you how you can use powerful and easy to use online tools to help achieve your property investing goals. In this blog you will find: A video recording of the live webinar which was presented on 9 April 2015. A downloadable copy of the slide deck.

Auckland's persistently heated property market may force the Reserve Bank to impose yet more restrictions, an economist says. The average sale price for a home in New Zealand's biggest metropolis has blown out to a new high of more than $750,000.

Auckland's quality of life has again rated among the best in the world in a survey by recruitment consultancy Mercer. The city was ranked third in Mercer's global Quality of Living Index, the same as its 2014 position, behind

Prime Minister John Key says there is little the Government can do about the New Zealand dollar reaching parity with the Australian dollar.

The average sale price for an Auckland home has blown out to a new high of more than three quarters of a million dollars. The latest figures from Barfoot & Thompson, Auckland's largest realtor, show sale prices reached an average of $776,729 in March.