Fixed by adding these lines to the pom under the <resources> section
<resource>
<directory>src/main/resources</directory>
<filtering>true</filtering>
<includes>
<include>**/*.properties</include>
</includes>
</resource>
What I don’t fully understand is the need for doing this.
a) I can run this on an external app server without having to add this line and the app reads application.properties just fine.
b) I can run the app as a standalone java application in eclipse (i.e., without having to build the app through maven) and it reads application.properties just fine
c) isn’t spring-boot supposed to read it by default regardless? (as shown by the two cases above?)
Thanks everyone for their help. hopefully this will help others.