Tony, 44, rushed to wake his friend Reg, who was renting one of the rooms from him.
He thought the fire was in the house, but when he ran to get his car out of the carport, he realised the vehicle was on fire. "It went up into the carport roof area, then into the house."
Neighbours, woken by the commotion, scrambled to keep the fire from spreading to property next door.
One neighbour said her husband grabbed a hose and started wetting everything down.
She said he inhaled "quite a bit" of smoke and wasn't feeling well afterwards.
The house's two occupants have been left with nothing but the shirts on their backs. Reg, 61, was only able to recover the charred remains of his wallet.
"We lost everything," he said. "Either water damage or smoke damage."
Tony was "absolutely gutted". He had no car or contents insurance, though the house was insured.
"We've been working our asses off the last week to clean up the house," he said.
They had bought new tools in preparation for doing up the house, but they had been ruined in the fire.
"It's a beautiful old villa, and I was so looking forward to having it, you know - it was going to be repainted for summer."
The men said neighbours had been "really fab" and kept them going on coffee and offered them a place to stay for a couple of nights.
"I'm not going to give up," Tony said. "This isn't going to beat me - that house is going to get rebuilt one way or another."
Emergency services were called out to the other fire at Brooking St, Tawhero, about 2.15am yesterday. A car parked in a driveway was burning and endangering the house, senior fire-station officer Gary Wilson said.
The car fire was "well involved" by the time the two fire trucks reached the scene, and two high-pressure hoses were used to put it out.
The house had minor heat damage.
Detective Karl Reyland said police were considering that the fires were linked and would have scene guards posted at the Gloucester St house overnight as investigations continued.
