Moving House on an NDIS Plan in Victoria

Published by SESI Care Services · Updated September 2026 · 5-minute summary

Quick answer: Moving house does not stop your NDIS plan or cancel your funding, including when you move interstate. The scheme is national, so plan and budget travel with you. What moving triggers is a change of situation you must report: the NDIA lists moving within your area and moving to a different state as changes to tell it about as soon as possible, and it then has 21 days to decide whether to vary your plan, hold a reassessment, or change nothing. What breaks when people move is not the plan, it is the delivery: support workers may not be rostered to the new address, your local area coordinator changes with the region, and home modifications stay behind. Sort the providers before you sort the boxes.

Key takeaways

• Your plan is national. Moving suburb, region or state does not end it, cut your budget or make you reapply.
• Tell the NDIA as soon as you can. A decision follows within 21 days, a varied plan within 7 days after that.
• Price limits almost never change inside Victoria. Loadings apply only in Remote and Very Remote areas, and Victoria has neither.
• Travel time changes, and it comes out of your budget. Up to 30 minutes is claimable in MMM 1 to 3 areas, up to 60 minutes in MMM 4 and 5.
• Home modifications stay with the house; assistive technology you own goes with you.
• Notice periods come from your service agreement, not the NDIS Act. Read yours before you tell anyone you are leaving.
• Moving out of the family home is a life stage transition with its own funded supports.

The order to do things in

Almost every gap in support comes from doing this backwards: giving notice first, then starting to look. Work back from the move date.

When	What to do
8 to 12 weeks out	Ask each provider, in writing, whether they roster the new address. Do not accept “probably”.
6 to 8 weeks out	Note the notice period in every service agreement. Start looking for replacements.
4 to 6 weeks out	Agree a written start date with the new provider that falls before your last shift with the old one, then give notice to the provider you are leaving.
2 to 4 weeks out	Report the change of situation to the NDIA. Update your address with your plan manager, coordinator and equipment supplier.
Moving week	Keep at least one regular shift running. Reduce hours, do not pause them.
First fortnight	Confirm the new roster in writing before you cancel anything else.

The NDIA’s own advice is blunt: find the new provider before you finish with the current one. Our guide to switching NDIS providers in Victoria covers the handover mechanics.

Telling the NDIA you have moved

Report a change of situation by calling 1800 800 110, through the online service hub, through your my NDIS contact, at an NDIS office, or by submitting the change of details or change of situation form. One of three things then happens: the NDIA varies your plan, replaces it through a reassessment, or decides nothing needs to change. Its changing your plan guidance sets the timeframes at 21 days for a variation and 90 days for a reassessment, with a varied plan issued 7 days after the decision.

Be realistic about the threshold. A reassessment needs a significant and ongoing change to your functional capacity or situation, not a new postcode. Moving becomes a funding argument when it changes what you need: informal support you have moved away from, longer trips to the same appointments, a house needing different equipment. Our reassessment checklist sets out what evidence carries weight.

Scenario one: moving suburb within Melbourne

This is the most common move and the most underestimated, because the plan genuinely does not change and people assume the supports will not either. They can, because rosters are built around travel: a provider that comfortably covers Narre Warren and the south-east may not roster an address forty minutes away. Under the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, a provider can claim up to 30 minutes of travel to and from each participant in MMM 1 to 3 areas and up to 60 minutes in MMM 4 and 5, and only where you agreed those costs in advance in your service agreement. That travel comes out of your plan budget, not the provider’s, so a longer trip either costs you funded hours or costs the provider a shift that no longer works.

So before you sign a lease, ask in writing whether the roster already covers that street on the days you need, and what the travel line becomes. Our questions to ask an NDIS provider covers the rest.

Your my NDIS contact can change too, because local area coordination partners are contracted by service area: the NDIA’s Victorian partner list has Latrobe Community Health Service covering Cardinia, Casey and Greater Dandenong, and Brotherhood of St Laurence the Bayside Peninsula area. Your plan does not change, but the person you ring about it might. Price limits do not change at all.

Scenario two: moving regional or interstate

Does the plan follow you? Yes. The NDIS is a single national scheme, so your plan, budget, goals and plan management arrangement are unaffected by crossing a state line. You do not reapply, and funding does not lapse while the address change is processed.

Does anything about the money change? Only in genuinely remote areas. The pricing arrangements set price limits that are in general 40% higher in Remote areas and 50% higher in Very Remote areas, decided by the location of the participant at the time of service, not the provider’s head office. The current ABS Remoteness Areas classify no Victorian area as either, so a move from Melbourne to Ballarat, Shepparton or Bairnsdale leaves your price limits alone. A move to remote Western Australia or the Northern Territory does not, and higher price limits mean the same hourly support draws down more of your budget.

What changes across a border is the layer of state services beside the plan.

What travels with you	What stops at the border
Your NDIS plan, budget and goals	The Victorian Multi Purpose Taxi Program subsidy
Plan management and self-management arrangements	Your local area coordination partner and my NDIS contact
Assistive technology you own	Home modifications funded at your old address
A worker’s NDIS Worker Screening clearance	Your disability advocacy organisation
Support coordination delivered by phone or video	Providers whose rosters do not reach the new state

Worker screening is portable even though checks are issued locally: the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission confirms state and territory units run them against nationally consistent criteria, and a clearance covers risk assessed roles anywhere in Australia for five years.

The Victorian taxi subsidy is not portable. Safe Transport Victoria’s Multi Purpose Taxi Program requires members to live in Victoria, and cancels membership once a member stops being eligible.

Advocacy sits in between: the National Disability Advocacy Program is national but delivered by organisations serving particular areas, and Victoria funds its own agencies. Your advocate does not come with you, so find the new one early.

Scenario three: moving out of the family home for the first time

This is not a change of address with extra steps. It is a life stage transition, and the NDIS treats it as one.

Start twelve months out, because the question is different: not “who cleans the new place” but “which skills do I want before I am doing this alone”. The 2026-27 NDIS pricing schedule prices two items for exactly this: Life Transition Planning including Mentoring, Peer Support and Individual Skill Development (09_006_0106_6_3) and Assistance with Accommodation and Tenancy Obligations (08_005_0106_2_3), both at $83.87 an hour nationally. The second covers the parts of renting nobody teaches you: applications, inspections, reading a lease, keeping the tenancy.

SESI is registered for assist life stage transition, and the work usually takes this shape: practical rehearsal in the months before the move, a heavier pattern of support for the first eight to twelve weeks in the new place, then a planned reduction as routines settle. Alongside it, development of life skills covers the cooking, budgeting and transport routines that decide whether independent living holds. Both are capacity building supports, so success means needing fewer hours in a year, not more.

Asking the NDIA to fund a change in where and how you live is a home and living request, and it needs evidence from treating professionals about your daily support and housing needs, when and how often you need support, and why the options already tried are not enough. Get that report before you find a property.

Plan around the exclusions: the supports lists rule out day to day living costs, so the NDIS funds neither rent, bonds, deposits, stamp duty, mortgage repayments and strata fees, nor bills and groceries, and the NDIA can ask for funding back if it is spent on something that is not an NDIS support.

Home modifications, equipment and home and living supports

These behave differently, so untangle them before the move rather than during it.

Support	What happens when you move
Home modifications	Stay with the property. Second homes are funded only in rare situations.
Assistive technology you own	Comes with you. The urgent repairs pathway applies where equipment is your property, not leased, hired or on loan.
Hired or leased equipment	Repaired by the provider you hire from, so check they service the new area before you go.
SIL and SDA	Tied to a specific home and household. A move is a new arrangement, not a transfer, and must be agreed with the NDIA first.

The home modifications guideline treats tenancy length as central to value for money: minor modifications are likely to be reasonable with a lease of at least 12 months, complex ones with a lease of at least 3 years, and written owner approval is needed either way. The NDIA may fund removing a modification at the end of a lease, but only where that was agreed before it funded the work.

On moving costs the guideline is direct. The NDIA can consider some costs of moving to a more accessible home where modifying is not an option, but says it usually will not fund moving house, “because everyone has to pay moving costs, whether or not they have a disability”. Its own summary is the line to act on: check before you move.

Support coordination through a move

A move is the stretch where support coordination earns its funding, because the work is sequencing and chasing rather than caring. You choose your coordinator and can change at any time, and an NDIA planner can send a request to up to four for you.

The genuinely local part of the role is knowledge: which providers actually roster your new area, which programs exist, which waiting lists move. That does not transfer with a coordinator who has never worked the region. The rest runs fine over the phone. SESI’s support coordination runs by phone and video and is available Australia-wide, which is why a move interstate can end our in-person shifts without ending the coordination relationship. Our in-person supports are delivered across Victoria.

Frequently asked questions

Talk to SESI

If a move is coming up and you are not sure your supports can follow, tell us the new address and the date and we will give you a straight answer about what we can roster.

Tell us what’s going on: sesi.com.au/referral · Call: 1800 017 374

This guide is general information based on National Disability Insurance Agency, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and Safe Transport Victoria material current at September 2026. It is not advice about your individual plan, tenancy or provider arrangement. For questions about your NDIS plan, contact the NDIA on 1800 800 110.