What is Nest?

Nest is an online tool for people with disability and providers of housing suitable for people with disability.

Nest matches people with disability to homes that meet their needs, support requirements and lifestyle choices. Nest makes it easy for housing providers to shortlist eligible applicants and quickly fill vacant properties and rooms.

With listings from disability housing providers, community and social housing providers, real estate agents and private landlords, Nest is the go-to website for people with disability looking for a home.

Nest is free, fully accessible and independent.

How does Nest work?

A user (person with disability, their carer, support worker or support coordinator) sets up a personal profile outlining their support and accessibility requirements, funding level and personal preferences in a home.

Providers list their properties and vacancies including their preferences for a resident (gender, age, support and funding levels).

Using a person’s preferences – and the information provided about each property – Nest matches users to suitable properties that meet their needs and wants. Users can then apply to be considered for any matched vacancies that appeal to them.

Providers receive a shortlist of applicants who they can contact to discuss compatibility and suitability to the vacancy.

Nest has expanded

From May 2019, Nest began accepting listings from all providers of housing suitable to people with disability. This includes disability providers, community and social housing providers, real estate agents and private landlords.

When Nest launched in May 2018 we only listed properties and vacancies allocated specialist disability accommodation (SDA) funding under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Our aim was to build a website and matching platform that would connect people with disability who have SDA funding to homes that were suitable for them and met their funding requirements and personal preferences.

We wanted to help the many tens of thousands of NDIS participants who have unmet housing needs find a suitable home easily, quickly and without fuss.

However, we soon realised that there were tens of thousands of other people with disability looking for a home who did not have SDA funding and therefore were not eligible for the vacancies listed on Nest. These people have just as much trouble finding accessible housing options that meet their needs and wants as those with SDA funding.

At the same time, other providers of disability housing, including real estate agents, and community and social housing providers, began approaching Nest to list their disability-friendly properties and vacancies and connect with potential tenants.

We saw an opportunity to widen the scope of Nest to include all disability housing options - not just properties allocated SDA funding.

To expand to this level, a lot of hard work has gone into the back-end of the Nest website. Ultimately, however, Nest’s powerful matching engine has remained the same and the experience for users (people with disability, their carers and supports) and providers has not changed.

As is expected, a change this big is not without its challenges. While we have done our best to ensure a smooth transition to Nest 2.0, we are continually making refinements and improvements.

We welcome your feedback on your experience using Nest. If you spot or encounter any bugs, lack of functionality, errors or other issues, or you have feedback about the platform or website, please let us know. You can email us at info@gonest.com.au, complete our enquiry form or fill in a feedback forms. We are committed to building a tool to enable all people with disability to find their perfect home.

Who is behind Nest?

Nest has been developed by Northcott Innovation (NI), an established disability focused innovation company.

NI is a solutions developer involved in creating new and innovative products and services for people with disability. NI’s purpose is to enable the co-creation of solutions to support people with disability to live as equals in their communities. NI is not a provider of disability housing or disability support services.