ABC 7.30 running a story on NRAS now

ABC 7.30 running a story on NRAS now

Edit: you can probably see it online, basically many payments are late and the govt. and managing company in this case blame each other and the investor/s are stuck in the middle. Was sold to them in regard to all the benefits of the payment.

Moral, make sure you check into who is managing and history of payments to others. Feel sorry for early adopters as they would not have any info to go on.

 

Euro on the tele?

 

I've heard nothing but horror stories about the featured company from Tennants.
Looks like he land lords received similar levels of "service".

 

No, but the investors raised some of the same points and how it was not working out for them, seems mainly due to the managing company. I think this and not over paying would be key if your willing to rely on others and be locked into that system.

 

I watched this. I know nothing about NRAS. I have a question from watching this though, why do the DSS payments go to a management company first and not straight to the landlords?

 

Everyone needs to take their cut. It wouldnt be a govt initiative without being convoluted and numerous layers of intermediaries to complicate things

 

Interesting that this focused on one management company only, although did make a small reference to the payments from the DSS being late, and there being a previous audit into managing the program. The payments would go to a management company so the govt only had so many groups to deal with, as opposed to the thousands of NRAS investors in the scheme. Thing I took from this is to do a lot of DD into the management company.

 

I would imagine the govt. did this to try and lower admin costs for themselves, the problem is they are not or do not have in place systems to rectify problems, they probably never thought some PMs could do the shifty or be incompetent or whatever

This PM issue is one of the large failings it seems & being stuck with that PM, while they do as they wish to you.

 

For those who missed it.

Former Family First candidate accused of delaying payments to investors in housing scheme

 

Yeah pretty poor form... Sounds like Ethan have received the money some time ago and haven't passed it through to the investors with who they are in a Non Entity Joint Venture.

Ethan are one of 134 approved participants and while I dont know all 134 organisations I do know the larger ones, all of whom have paid their investors....

Ethan can reasonably claim the delays of 2014/15 were the fault of DSS - fair enough- thats on DSS' head. But all payments prior to 14/15 were on time, and the 15/16 payments were largely completed by August / September this year, so there's just no excuse for multiple years of incentives to have been delayed or not paid. None whatsoever.

I loathe when cowboy operators ruin the reputation of others ...

 

NRAS was originally intended for institutional investors, but was broadened to include profit and not for profit housing providers. They are called "approved participants" or more commonly, "consortiums" ...

As the name implies, they are approved to participate dwellings in NRAS. The Govt didnt want to have to deal with 40,000 individual investors , so they put the Approved Participant model in place...

 

Not quite right. You can request that your NRAS incentive is transferred to an alternative Approved Participant .

 

Ahh, ok, I remember reading some had a hell of time with this problem, maybe part of the issue was lack of options where they were ? Or maybe they did not know you can change.

 

After the LIBS got in, they took a hatchet to the team managing/administering NRAS. Previously, the team was 20+ people. It was culled to just 3. All direct phone lines were cut and replaced by a 1300 number, and all staff emails were closed off and replaced with a generic helpdesk address.

Since 2009, Approved Participants would liaise directly with case managers regarding compliance and payments, and investors always got their money on time. After 2014, when the cuts came (under Morrison - who is ironically back championing affordable housing nowadays) it got pretty ugly for a year. No direct phone or email access was available to any of the Approved Participants. Very few staff were available to do the compliance and issue the payments, and the 2014/15 payments were severely delayed. And Round 5 NRAS was cancelled.

There was a strong train of thought that Morrison had done this deliberately to try and make people withdraw from NRAS, as it had been a wedge political issue prior to the 2014 budget. But the states quite love NRAS and there was a lot of political pressure applied ( remember they pay for 25% of the NRAS credit) and this prompted the ANAO audit.

To be fair, the audit was a bit embarrassing for DSS ( and Morrison - although he had moved on by then to border control) and since the audit, the delegate ( the senior public servant who signs off on payments) was "promoted " to another department, a replacement was appointed , and payments got back on track for 15/16 - except for Ethan who would appear - if the story was correct- to be using the delays from 14/15 ( the only year where any delays occurred since 2009) to hold up multiple years of payments.

 

It seems there are risks that incentive may not be passed down in time or suffer signifiant delays due to either government compliance understaffing or consortium or both.

Not much we can do about government understaffing. Any way to mitigate the consortium side of issue?

 

I dont know what to tell you... I dont have these issues and my clients dont have these issues.... had delays in 2014/15 like everyone else... but not before that, and not since. Even if the RTO certificates are issued though, the ATO portal crashing is something that could stop people getting their tax returns finalised.

 

It is between consortium and individual investor as government website says. What legal weapons do our individual investor have to exercise the right should consortium practices dishonestly? Wonder if this can be dictated by contract between consortium and investor. I failed to find any solution to this.

 

It was discussed above that you could change the participant, maybe that is the answer, or maybe your stuck if there is only one locally.

I would think there should be a way to force the govt. to go into bat for people over this, they want to make the admin easier, they must also have some responsibility to ensure they operate correctly, but that does not help if they go broke or you need that money now.

The way I see it, people invest to get away from needing to rely on government, locking yourself in to rely on them may not be a great idea, if you can afford to wait for any payment as a form of bonus, this would be the ideal setup.

 

Hi Euro73,

Why dont you tell this to your friends at Questus ? i got NRAS allocation with them. you helped me in that process. But they are charging 12.5% commission and 2 weeks letting fee. Also, they employ less staff and give them so much work and we suffer. Another NRAS approved managing agent is ready to do property management for me at 7% all inclusive rate but your friends at Questus are not letting me go with them as they are getting good commission from my property management. Its almost rip off and i have nowhere to go as as part of Questus fund, they got me to sign limited power of attorney to accept whoever they choose for property management.

Its not just me, i know other 5 investors who have same issue with them.

Rooky

 

Rooky

Have you received your NRAS credits?