Australasian non-bank mortgage lender Bluestone Group hopes to use some of a capital injection from the UK as a launch-pad for a return to lending in New Zealand.Executive chairman and founder Alistair Jeffery told Banking Day that Bluestone was looking for a warehouse funding facility from a New Zealand bank for the next six to 12 months to resume lending in New Zealand. The firm's NZ strategy will be to grow its non-conforming residential and commercial mortgages business, along with reverse mortgages.Bluestone's operations in New Zealand peaked in 2007 with 30 staff in Auckland and Wellington. It was lending up to NZ$250 million per year of residential and commercial mortgages. These were for customers unable to obtain loans from banks because they were self-employed or did not comply with strict residency or income rules.The lender pulled out after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis shut down the syndicated funding system used by non-banks in Australia and New Zealand. It resumed lending in Australia last year after obtaining an initial warehousing facility from Macquarie Bank. Jeffery said investors were cashed up and he saw no reason why Bluestone couldn't increase its lending in New Zealand back to those 2007 levels or even higher, "given population growth and [the fact] property prices have risen."Bluestone would need to obtain a warehouse facility from a bank before lending the funds and then issuing securitised mortgages. Jeffery said Bluestone would not be targeting the high loan to value ratio (LVR) loans that have been restricted by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand since October 1, despite having the option to do so. Banks are restricted under the rules to 10 per cent of new mortgages having an LVR of over 80 per cent, while New Zealand's non-banks are not.Bluestone lent up to 95 per cent LVR before 2008 but had mostly focused on lower LVR mortgages, and its average LVR was around 75 per cent."High LVR lending was never really our game and was one reason we came through the downturn in good shape," Jeffery said.