Client Journey: Murray’s journey home

Wakefield, Tasman — the Toroa, on leased land

Murray could not afford to buy a property. He did not need to. What he needed was somebody willing to lease him a corner of theirs, and the way he got it was by writing a short introduction about himself.

Who Murray is

Murray is Nelson born and bred and has spent most of his life in Richmond and Wakefield. After a significant change in his personal circumstances he had been living in Australia, and by early 2025 he was coming home. He was 66. Buying a house was out of reach.

The first contact actually came from family — a relative enquired on his behalf in October 2024, asking whether we had any homes they could walk through before committing to anything. Things were up in the air with finance and it went quiet for a few months, which is the normal shape of these things.

What he decided

He looked seriously at buying on the West Coast first. In February 2025 he bought one of our consultation packages and we produced a property report on a section at Runanga, in the Grey District — what the rules allowed, what it would take, what it would cost.

He read it and chose a different path. Rather than buy land somewhere cheap and far from everyone he knew, he would lease land in Wakefield, where his family is.

That decision is the whole story. A tiny home plus a land lease put him back in his own community at a fraction of the cost of buying there.

The introduction

Our land lease process is not a tenancy application. Before anything else, we ask the person looking for land to write a short introduction about themselves for the landowners to read — because someone is about to have a stranger living at the bottom of their property, and a name on a form does not tell them anything.

Murray wrote his in about a paragraph. Where he grew up. Where he had been. Why he was coming back. That he is a dog lover and was looking forward to having one again once he was settled. That his family is in Wakefield.

The landowners said yes.

We have since used that approach as the template. The introduction is the part that works, and it works because it is honest.

Shaping the agreement

Murray was one of the clients who helped us get our land lease paperwork right. Through March 2025 he went through the draft lease and our code of conduct and sent suggestions back. Some of them changed the documents we still use today. He had a clear view about what was fair to both sides, and he was right often enough that we listened.

The build

His Toroa was built through the winter of 2025 with weekly progress shots, and there is one week we still laugh about. Kim was on leave, so the builders sent the photos in directly — and got us beautifully detailed close-ups of the flashings and the cladding, and not one picture of the actual house.

The rest of the work was the unglamorous kind that decides whether a site actually functions: the landowners trenched for services, an electrician set up the power supply, and we worked through his internet options — fibre to the site, 5G, or Starlink — until he had a proper connection rather than a compromise.

His home was transported to Wakefield on Friday 29 August 2025.

Where it is at

Murray is home. He is in Wakefield, near his family, on land he does not own and does not need to, in a house that is entirely his. In January 2026 he told his story to Stuff, so a lot more people have now heard it than would have otherwise.

What this taught Ruru

Buying land is not the only way to live on it, and for a large number of people over sixty it is not a realistic one. A tiny home on leased land put Murray back in the town he grew up in. Buying would not have.

And the thing that unlocked it was not a bank, a contract or a consent. It was a paragraph in which a man told some strangers who he was and why he was coming home.

Can't afford to buy where you want to live? That is exactly the problem a land lease solves. Talk to us about it.