Blood, sweat and rentals: How one couple built their retirement dream

Saturday, 27 June 2026

After two-and-a-half decades of managing rentals in Te Kūiti, Alistair and Carolyn Brandon are stepping into retirement in their dream home and have opened a luxury BnB.

The Brandons reckon they put their “blood, sweat and tears” into their investment rentals and it’s paid off for them as they relax in their mountain-side home just out of Cambridge and welcome guests into their slice of paradise.

Over roughly a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s, the couple bought 11 houses and a block of four flats in Te Kūiti. They not only made their livelihood out of these initially “unliveable” properties, but it also enabled them to build their luxurious four-bedroom home and open their BnB, Mountain Rise Retreat.

Both from farming backgrounds, for the first 13 years of their marriage the couple worked on Alistair’s family farm in Te Kūiti and had their four children. However, as the farm became less financially viable for both him and his brother to be on, they decided to sell and Alistair took on a fencing job.

Shortly after, they decided to take on a new challenge: rentals. Within a couple of years, the fencing job was phased out and they were full-time investors.

“It was just a sensible way to get an income quickly,” Carolyn said. “We both had some inheritance and so I put all of mine in as well and that’s how we funded it.”

They bought their first house in 1994 and quickly caught on to mortgagee sales. Often, they bought houses within two weeks and occasionally they wouldn’t even see inside a house until after they had bought it.

The homes in their portfolio were between two and four bedrooms, plus there were the flats, and they cost between $18,000 and $28,000.

“They were unliveable when we bought them. There were holes in the walls, mould and they were grotty. We just had to strip them down,” Carolyn said.

One of the houses they bought was known as Te Kūiti’s second dump with the lawn piled high with scrap metal and rusted-out vehicles. The couple would spend up to six months or so and approximately $10,000 on renovations for each house.

They would put in second-hand kitchens and fresh carpets as well as redo plumbing and electrics. The secret to their success: doing it all themselves - from carpeting to painting and laying out the majority of the plumbing.

As ex-farmers, Alistair said they had a can-do attitude and that’s what made the difference as they saved money on tradies. Once renovated, they would rent the houses out for $120 per week, which had increased to $260 to $300 in the last five years of ownership.

They were always “cash positive” and only got out small loans initially to continue buying houses. They stopped purchasing properties in the early 2000s when prices started to rise and $20,000 houses started to climb to $90,000.

Around 2015, after they lost a house to a fire, they decided it was time to sell, Alistair said.

“I guess it was my age and I realised that I was the one putting in a lot of the physical work doing the renovations. It seemed like if something happened to me that it would be too much for Carolyn on her own.”

After three to four years of renovations, including new kitchens, they sold their last property just after Covid. The highest price they got was $460,000 and the lowest would have been about $160,000.

“We sold them all in a high market and we made our money to be able to come here. Technically, the 11 houses became one,” Alistair said.

Keen to be closer to family, they started looking at properties around Cambridge, initially with no intention of building, Carolyn explained.

“We came up to Maungakawa to see an open home down the bottom of the hill and when we drove up here and saw the view, it was just like ‘oh, this what we’re after’. So we thought, well we’re just going to have to build.

“The way the sun just hits those hills, it’s just beautiful and magical.”

Alistair reckoned their love of the land and farming roots came out to play when deciding to build here.

In 2019 they bought their property near the top of the mountain. Construction began in 2021 and finished late 2024. They were just putting the finishing touches on the inside of the house now.

They estimated that the house had cost just over $3 million to build and the section was about $600,000. They had taken out a small loan at the end of construction that would have contributed less than 10% to the build and the rest was savings.

As with their rentals, they had been heavily involved in the painting, building, earthworks and the interior design, saving about $300,000 in the process. Adjacent to the main home is the one-bedroom BnB that they opened in late 2025.

The BnB provides a needed income stream for their retirement years Alistair reckoned, but they also enjoyed running it and providing high-end accommodation.

“It’s satisfying to share something so beautiful and part of our intent is that it’s a retreat, not just a BnB,” Carolyn said.

They had seen solid bookings with many of their guests coming from overseas. Currently, the BnB cost just under $1000 for a minimum two-night stay, but they were considering increasing the price after high demand.