MAJOR crime detectives are piecing together the murder of a man found in the back of a burnt-out utility in Torrensville and the torching of his Black Forest house.

Firefighters were called to the East Ave house about 5.55am yesterday and then to a Holden ute ablaze behind a row of cottages on Jervois St, Torrensville, at 6.37am.

Major Crime Branch Detective Inspector Mark Trenwith said the burnt-out Holden ute was registered to a middle-aged man who rented the house - and the man was missing.

"We have considerable police resources being thrown into it because we are treating it as a murder," he said.

"We cannot locate the resident of the house at Black Forest. The car and the body of the man were extensively affected by the fire."

Det-Insp Trenwith said a post-mortem was expected to start late yesterday and would determine whether the man was killed before the ute being torched.

Black Forest neighbour Andrew Wastell, 24, said he had borrowed tools from a man who had lived alone in the house and who largely kept to himself.

Mr Wastell said the man often worked on his motorbike in the backyard.

But he said he had not seen or heard anything suspicious at the house.

Mr Wastell was shaving when alerted to flames coming from the house just before 6am. "My housemate heard breaking glass and I went outside and the house was on fire," he said.

The property's owner said the man had rented the house for about five years.

"A (police) detective told me he was trying to find out if he had any next of kin but I didn't know," she said.

Jervois St residents said they were woken by the sound of a car alarm and then heard two loud explosions. Neighbour Luciano Macri said: "It was loud enough to wake me ... I knew something was going on.

"I went out the back and the car was on fire."

Another neighbour, Tom Delaney, said there had been some ongoing "dramas around the area in the past six months".

He said they included drug raids by police, when cannabis plants were removed from one of the six cottages.

Neighbour Andrew Pavlou said the explosions had sounded like a bomb.

Originally published as House fire linked to murdered man