Commercial Property Loan NZ: What It Takes to Qualify

Two products sit under this umbrella, and which one you need depends on the timeline, not just the amount.

Short-term commercial property loans run $50,000 to $10,000,000+, for 3 to 24 months, usually interest-only with the loan repaid in one lump sum at exit — a sale, a refinance, or a development reaching completion. It's called a bridge for a reason: you're meant to get to the other side, not set up camp on it.

Long-term non-bank finance runs $300,000 to $5,000,000+, for 20 to 30 years, serviced monthly like a standard mortgage — a longer commitment than most gym memberships, and considerably harder to cancel by ignoring the emails.

The security isn't limited to a shop with a lease attached. In practice it covers six categories: commercial & retail, industrial & warehouse, residential investment, bare land & sections, multi-unit developments, and mixed-use property. The full parameter breakdown — including interest structures — is on our property finance page. This post is about what it takes to get either product approved.

Short answer: up to 70% of the property's value on commercial security, a little more room on residential security behind the same facility — up to 75% for a short-term loan, up to 80% for long-term finance. Budget on at least 30% in cash or usable equity for a straightforward commercial-secured deal.

Lenders price LVR against a registered valuation, not the number on your sale and purchase agreement, once you're this far into the process — so get that valuation early rather than assuming the purchase price is the number that matters. Know your LVR and your exit before the first phone call. A borrower who can say "I need 65% LVR, exit is a sale in eighteen months" gets taken seriously faster than one who can't.

Every lender wants to see the same four things, just weighted differently.

• check_circleThe security. A registered valuation, or at minimum an agreed purchase price, on the property backing the loan.
• check_circleThe entity. Company incorporation or trust deed, plus valid ID for every director and guarantor.
• check_circleThe numbers. The borrower's financial position, and — for long-term facilities — servicing capacity for the monthly repayment.
• check_circleThe exit. How the loan actually gets repaid: a sale, a refinance onto a bank facility, or scheduled amortisation.

Short-term loans lean harder on security and exit. Long-term facilities lean harder on servicing, because the lender is being repaid monthly for two or three decades, not at a single exit event. Get these four things sorted before the first phone call and a term sheet turns around in 24–48 hours. Turn up missing one and the file doesn't die — it just goes quiet.

Ask five lenders for a commercial property loan rate and you'll get five different answers, and none of them will come from a rate card. (If someone quotes you a number before they've seen your file, hang up — they're guessing, not underwriting.) Commercial pricing is risk-based, not a published table like a home loan special. Five things move it:

• Loan-to-value ratio (LVR) on the security
• The type and quality of the security property
• Bank versus non-bank lender
• Term length and repayment structure
• Strength of serviceability and the borrower’s financial position

The Reserve Bank's official cash rate sets the floor everyone prices off, but from there it's entirely deal-specific — two borrowers with the same loan size can land on different pricing because one has a cleaner exit or stronger security. A generic online calculator can't account for any of that — it's basically asking a vending machine to underwrite a mortgage. The only way to get a real number is a term sheet built around your actual deal. Ours comes back in 24–48 hours.

Here's my honest opinion, from doing this since 2017: a bank declining a good commercial deal is usually a policy problem, not a numbers problem. The deal didn't fit a checklist built for a different kind of borrower. That's not the same as the deal being bad. I've done this long enough that a credit committee can still catch me off guard — rarely in a good way, but the reasoning's almost always the same: right deal, wrong box.

It's also why an advisor who only deals with one or two banks isn't really advising — that's a referral desk with a nicer waiting room. We hold relationships across 20 banks and non-bank lenders — seven banks, thirteen non-bank — plus non-panel access to institutional funders. It works a bit like Sherlock Holmes' rule: eliminate the lenders whose policy doesn't fit the file, and whoever's left, however unlikely, is usually the one who says yes. An indicative term sheet on the right file still comes back in 24–48 hours, and settlement can follow in as little as 72. You can check any advisor's licensing yourself on the Financial Service Providers Register — ours is FSP 714331.

It's worth ruling these out fast rather than losing two weeks finding out the hard way.

• blockBuying your own home. This is residential mortgage lending, not commercial. A bank or a mortgage advisor is the right call, not us.
• blockYou need under $300,000 long-term. Long-term non-bank finance starts at $300,000. Below that, a short-term facility or your existing bank relationship is more likely to fit.
• blockYou can't service a monthly repayment and don't have a clean exit. Long-term finance needs servicing capacity. Short-term finance needs a real exit. If neither is there yet, that's the thing to fix first, not the application.

None of this is written to talk you out of calling. It's written so the first call is useful instead of a fishing trip. If you'd rather see how borrowers structure short timelines, our short-term finance page covers the 3–24 month end of this, and long-term finance covers the 20–30 year end. For general guidance on financing a growing business, business.govt.nz is a solid starting point too.