The Challenges

Independent living villages have four key challenges when building and selling their homes:

Visualisation

With only 2D renders and floor plans, people find it difficult to visualise the actual size and scale of a property. It's been a common challenge in our industry for decades and independent living villages find this to be true with their own projects.

Support coordinators, functionally impaired people and their families find it challenging to visualise the ILV homes before they were built.

Transport & Accessibility

Finding wheel chair accessible transport can be very difficult.

If they do manage to organise transport and the site is under construction it's hard for someone in a wheelchair to get around without access to lifts and stairs. They can only view the property from a street view.

Financial

Much like property development industry, if there isn't an occupier after the property is built there can be a significant financial loss.

Once the support coordinator and the family decide they would like to move into the property, the approval process to receive Specialist Disability Accommodation payments from NDIS can take up to 6 months, which means there is a vacant ILV property for the same period of time.

How does this impact ILV financially?
​If ILV have a property vacant whilst the SDA payments are being approved, they can lose up to $1000 of income a day ($180,000 every 6 months).