Whom to work with, besides NDISP?

P

any luck with this ?

Given you’ve joined here , I assume you’ve joined all the various NDIS / SDA Facebook pages . Just saw an SDA in Townsville being advertised by a cairns based provider and wondered if that is yours and if it wasn’t , would be something to check if you hadn’t already done so .

cheers

cliff

 

Hi All,

We are looking to build an sda in Melbourne and not sure which provider to go with.

Does anyone have any experience with Ethical Property Investments / Empowered Liveability OR Apollo?

 

to the answer of your question . No .

question I’d ask you is how long have you been reading up about NDIS

There are a lot of buying NDIS properties of developers which are priced relatively cheaply without any knowledge of the standards and where the demand is.

They’re told the property is being built to ndis standards ( not good enough ) , the rent is government guaranteed ( it’s not ) and once it’s finished they’ll give you a list of SDA’s to talk to .

There is a shortage of properties , but a lot is inadequate and in greenfield locations , generally away for the areas where NDIS tenants come from . They want to be close to friends and family who are generally in established areas .

We finished our first in 2020 ( 3 br ) and it’s been fully tenanted after a couple of months because we spent time thinking about what would attract tenants to that location .

we expect our second ( also 3br ) to also be fully tenanted as well , but it’s in a waterfront location with a swimming pool , though we will talk to our SDA as to whether it should be registered as a 2 br .

Most 3br’s are NOT fully tenanted .

If we were building now it would be a 2 br . In fact it was going to be a 2 br until the builder announced he was too busy . We reviewed our situation and decided our income was more than adequate and we wanted to move forward in retirement .

For me , the SDA’s are dealing with the tenants so they know what participants are looking for so they should at least be consulted . There are people who act as consultants who also seem to know .

Our SDA did all the designing and advice and it’s worked well for us .

if you haven’t spend the time reading all the ndis threads and it will give you more info .

cheers

cliff

 

Thanks Cliff.

Yes, read quite a bit. It’s comforting to know people are having good experiences, with the right provider and setup.

Empowered Liveability is an SDA provider. Apparently the biggest in Victoria. Won a bunch of awards.

I haven’t been able to find many independent reviews or accounts of lived experiences on them from investors/owners though.

Apollo is a property consulting firm, I don’t think they are an sda provider. They do have a lot of positive independent google reviews and reviews on trust pilot though from people who built sda through them. They’ve also been on a few mainstream news programs and articles discussing sda too.

I was hoping someone on here might have had some dealings with one or both of them.

 

Well all that sounds good but unfortunately its been 5 months now and NDISP still have not been able to get my rental income from the NDIA. The tenant has been living there for 5 months now.

NDISP have also said that they are waiting on the NDIA to pay them about $500k worth of rent, which is pretty concerning as it would impact many of their clients. We can't be waiting indefinitely and NDISP can't give a time frame of when I will get the rental income.

They have also said I cannot inspect my SDA house as you normally can with a normal rental property.

This is all pretty stressful as it's a $800k investment with no rental income and we all know interest rates have gone up. So you end up paying more in interest payments which you need to pay from other sources as the investment is not receiving any rental income.

I'll keep updating my experience with NDISP in future posts.

 

happy to hear your updates as they come and hope NDIA get their act together in relation to your property .

My understanding is that lack of inspection is industry wide and outside NDISP’s mandate .

cheers

cliff

 

I am still waiting on NDISP to get the SDA rental payments and it will be 6 months already. They have now said that this is a common issue and the average time its taking to get the payment is now at 10 months. So they are expecting the investor to now wait on average 10 months to start to get the SDA payment once the tenant has moved in. This is in addition to the time it takes to find a tenant. During all this time I need to keep paying the investment loan and interest.

I have asked for proof of a tenant living there or any evidence of NDIA taking this long to make a payment. They have said they cannot provide this and have said this information relates to the tenant so due to privacy they cannot provide anything. I have also asked to speak to Darryl Richards who is the founder/director of NDISP and they have said I cannot speak to him as he has stepped down from the day to day running of NDISP.

I am very concerned as no evidence is provided and hard to comprehend how the NDIA cannot make an SDA payment.

Are there any other SDA investors on this forum having this issue with their SDA management agency?

I'll keep updating my experience with NDISP in future posts.

 

Townsville Bulletin

 

Well that is not good at all.

NDISP have now told me that they haven't even enrolled my house into the SDA NDIS system‍. They did a mistake and some other house on the same street was enrolled. So the NDIS will not pay for the rent until the house has been enrolled, but there has been a tenant there for 6 months already. I have asked for this to be fixed or be compensated for the loss of 6 months and counting of rent.

NDISP is meant to be one of the top SDA providers but this is a big mistake and my house is now only being submitted to be enrolled as an SDA house. I still haven't received any SDA rent payment for the tenant living there and I have been having to pay the investment loan and interest with my own funds losing a lot of money. All throughout the build process they would tell me that it wouldn't be a problem to have the house tenanted with 2 tenants in just 5 months. Well I only have 1 tenant and the house hasn't even been enrolled yet due to the mistake they did.

It is hard to comprehend how this can occur and what exactly they have been doing and for this to go unnoticed for so many months. The house was finished and handed over last year in September 2023 and was supposed to be enrolled back then.

I will update on what compensation/solution they provide.