Investor overview · October 2026
Know if your SDA property will actually find a tenant — before you build it
Catchward is a product in development for Independent Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Property Investors.
The problem
Independent Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Property Investors
For Australians investing in Specialist Disability Accommodation, when the only numbers you've seen so far are the ones the seller gave you.
- An investigation found at least 760 of just 7,500 built SDA properties nationally sitting vacant — nearly 15% of all disability housing.
- "We're still not making it. We've both had breakdowns as a result of it" — one investor's description of life after their SDA build sat empty.
- The NDIA itself warns investors won't receive any income from an SDA dwelling if an eligible participant isn't living in it, and doesn't guarantee or back the investment.
In their own words
Real quotes from the people who have this problem
We're still not making it. We've both had breakdowns as a result of it.
We were looking at retiring five years down the track … now, I can't see us retiring at all.
The evidence
Researched before anything is built
How it scores
1 documented complaints about the tools they use today
Based on 6 direct quotes from 4 independent public sites, each recorded with its source. Scores are 1–5, rated from that evidence.
Why now
What’s changed
- 01
An investigation found at least 760 of 7,500 built SDA properties sitting vacant nationally — nearly 15% of all disability housing — making this risk now impossible for a new buyer to ignore. ABC News ↗
- 02
SDA finance rules now require borrowers to produce independent location research before a lender will approve finance, turning this from a nice-to-have into a near-mandatory step for anyone borrowing to build.
The product
Catchward
Catchward is a one-off check on a single SDA property, before you buy or build. Instead of a region-wide report covering an entire area, it looks at the one address you're actually deciding on, and tells you in plain terms whether the local numbers support another SDA dwelling there or whether you'd be adding to an area that's already oversupplied.
- 01
Send us the exact address or off-the-plan listing you're considering, plus the SDA design category.
- 02
We check how many similar SDA dwellings already exist in that catchment against how many eligible participants are known to be waiting there.
- 03
You get a plain verdict — undersupplied, oversupplied, or inconclusive — within 48 hours, before you sign anything.
Market size
TAM, SAM and SOM
- TAMTotal market
- A$1.87M7,500 SDA dwellings built across Australia to date × A$249 — using total stock as a proxy for the population of buy/build decisions this check could have informed, not a per-year figure. ABC News ↗
- SAMServiceable market
- A$373,500An assumed 20% of that stock represents an active or prospective buy/build decision at any given time (new and off-the-plan sales), rather than an already-settled, tenanted property.
- SOMObtainable in 3 years
- A$18,700 over 3 years5% of that serviceable population buying one check within three years.
The 20% active-buyer share and the A$249 price are assumptions, not validated figures; the 5% SOM share is an assumption, not a forecast. The true size of the current buyer pool (as opposed to existing stock) isn't published anywhere we could source.
Competition
What they use today, and where it falls short
| Today’s option | Looks at this specific property, not a whole region | Independent of the seller's commission | Priced and scoped for one buying decision | Plain-English verdict, not raw data tables |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region-wide supply and demand reportsCovers an entire region rather than the specific address being decided on, at roughly three times the price of a single-property check. | Partly | Yes | No | Yes |
| Free government risk disclosureExplains that the risk exists, but gives no number specific to any address. | No | Yes | No | No |
| Developer or marketer demand projectionsProduced by the party earning a commission on the sale, not independently checked. | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| DIY research of public NDIS dataThe NDIA doesn't publish participant-location data in a form an individual can easily interpret, and doing it properly takes real time most investors don't have. | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| CCatchwardanswers the one question a buyer actually has — this specific address — independently of the seller, for a fraction of a whole-region report's price, in plain English. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Business model
One-off fee per property checked
Working price, not yet validated — priced at roughly a third of the region-wide reports lenders already accept.
A Catchward check costs a fraction of a stalled SDA build
Catchward can't guarantee a tenant ever arrives, but shows how little it has to catch to be worth it. ABC News ↗
Go to market
How we reach them
- NowThe founding-access page is live, with a Google search ad campaign built around SDA investment and due-diligence searches.
- NextSDA investor forums and Facebook groups, where specific off-the-plan listings are already being discussed and shared.
- LaterPartnerships with SDA-specialist mortgage brokers who already have to source this kind of research for their clients' finance applications.
Where we are
Validating demand before building
- Problem researchReal complaints collected from public sources and scored
- Demand test · nowFounding-member applications open at catchward.thinksimple.app, with a targeted search ad campaign built for it
- BuildOnly if the demand test shows people will sign up
Signup numbers will be shared here once there are enough to mean something.
Get in touch
Interested in backing Catchward?
We’re happy to talk through the research, the demand test and the plan.
For information only. This is not an offer of securities or financial advice. Catchward is in development; nothing described here is available yet. Market figures and charts are estimates built from the sources shown.