Client Journey: L’s way home

Nelson — the Kororā, 12x3, single storey

Some journeys are short. This one took four and a half years, and almost all of it was spent looking for somewhere to put the home.

Who L is

L first wrote to us in July 2021. She was living in Nelson, she wanted to come and look at a Ruru, and in that very first email she raised the thing that would shape everything that followed: she would need land, either through a land share or a purchase, and she would need to know how long she had to find it.

She went elsewhere for that first build. A year later she wrote again from East Otago, wanting to come back to Nelson, and asked whether we could help her find land. We stayed in touch through 2023, 2024 and into 2025 — mostly about land, not about homes.

In February 2025 she signed with us. She was overseas at the time and signed the contract from a library.

What she decided

Her home is a Kororā: 12 metres by 3, single storey, two bedrooms, no stairs.

That last part matters. Almost every choice inside it was made with the long view in mind. A bath rather than a shower, with a custom bath rail and a weighted curtain made to fit it. A kitchen bench lowered so it can be worked at sitting down. A full wardrobe, blockout blinds throughout, an under-bench fridge instead of a full-height one, black tapware, and a glass art basin she chose herself.

It is a home designed to still work in twenty years' time. We build a lot of two-storey homes; this is not one of them, and it is a better home for it.

The build started on 2 March 2025. She had her walkthrough and her keys on 9 May.

The hard part

She still had nowhere to put it.

On 12 May 2025 her home left our yard and went into storage. That is not the ending anyone wants, and for the next several months finding her a site became a standing item for us.

We ran appeals through our newsletter. We posted across thirty to forty regional Facebook groups. We built marketing imagery for her listing and displayed flyers at our open yards. We offered to put her story in national media, which she declined for her own privacy reasons, and that was entirely her call to make.

We chased leads in Wakefield, Marahau, Motueka, Atawhai, Māhana, Golden Bay, The Brook, the Maitai Valley — and, at the wider end, Blenheim and Wellington. Some fell over on zoning. Some had no power or water to the boundary. Some had owners who changed their minds, or timelines that ran a year out. One by one they came to nothing.

"I appreciate all you are doing in continuing to help me find the living space that will provide for what I need." — L, May 2025

Her requirements never changed, and they were never unreasonable: the right zoning, power and water, privacy, and somewhere close enough to public transport and shops to actually live.

How it ended

It was family who cracked it. In January 2026 her brother and sister-in-law bought a section in Nelson so that she could finally live in her home.

That opened a different door. Rather than remaining a home on wheels, the plan was to put it down permanently, on foundations. They engaged a consent consultant, went through the Certificate of Acceptance process with Nelson City Council, and we supplied everything we held: framing plans, trailer plans, engineering plans, her custom floor, kitchen and bathroom drawings, insulation specifications and supplier documentation. Whatever the council asked for that we had, we sent.

L moved in around the start of August 2026.

Where it is at

She is settled. The home is on its own land, on foundations, fully consented, and she is living in it — which is all she wanted when she wrote to us the first time in 2021.

We are genuinely glad. A finished home sitting in storage is the least satisfying thing in this business, and watching this one finally land where it belongs was a good day.

What this taught Ruru

The home is the easy part. We can put a house together in three months. Land takes as long as it takes, and it is almost entirely outside our control and outside yours.

We do more on land now than we did in 2021 — the Land Match service exists because of journeys like this one — but the honest lesson is the same one Jean's story tells from the other direction: start the land search the day you start thinking about the home, not the day the home is finished. Run them side by side. The people who move in fastest are the ones who did both at once.

And when someone does the hard version anyway, you keep showing up for them until it is sorted.

Thinking about a Ruru but haven't found land yet? Talk to us about it early — before you order, not after.