Hi - I'm not a property investor (I actually found this site looking for something else) but would like to make a comment about your interest in investing with DHA. I'm actually a DHA tenant.
I have lived in several DHA houses, both owned (by DHA) and lease back (which is what you're looking into doing) and I just cannot see it being a wise investment. Maybe I'm dumb to a few facts on property investment, but I am not dumb to the way DHA handle their maintenance.
As tenants, we've had to fight for some pretty serious and not so serious maintenance requests to be done. I'm not talking about changing lightbulbs or washers either.
Let me see, we've had raw sewage spilling UP through the drains for 6 months at one property. That started happening after the garage flooded. The drainage system was completely wrong and it cracked. After 6 months of it, we were told yet again it wouldn't be fixed because someone with public title was having his gardens done and the bobcat was needed there. If I owned the house I wouldn't be impressed. Despite the garage being UMR, there was no inspection to see if there was any damage caused to the house from the flooding (which previous tenants and plumbers had gone through before). But I guess as a DHA owned property that statement is pretty irrelevant.
We had one house where there was a leaking pipe under the tiles. I'm guessing in the end the entire bathroom had to be pulled down or something and same goes for the walls because they were black with mould from ground to 3/4 of the way up. We had tried everything but when you're bleaching and using mould stuff twice a day and it's spread to the bathroom, it's not because we as tenants were negligent. In 18 months that we fought them over the mould, they replaced the vanity unit twice, resealed the tiles on the outside, blamed us. I don't know what happened, we had someone step in and declare the house and OH&S issue so we were moved out. That was a lease back property.
We had another (lease back) property that had cracked tiles. No biggie until the rain was too much and it started to rain in the loungeroom. It took 5 weeks for them to even acknowledge there was a problem and even then I had to explain that it was prior to another storm, otherwise, it was going to be a problem put aside for up to another 4 weeks (in theory and I will get around to explaining that). It took several weeks for the roof tiler to appear and I was told I should consider myself lucky they came out that quickly because I wasn't a priority. There was no inspection to see if there was any damage done to the ceiling cavity. Just the tiles replaced and the plasterboard patched and painted.
Another (lease back) house we had was built on foundations instead of a pad, which is common for that area and no biggie for us. Except that it had come off the support beams. I will give them that they were pretty quick to get in an engineer on that one though. We were posted shortly thereafter but did see that the house was being gutted for repairs.
This house is also a leaseback. I will just go as far as to say they've been served a Breach Notice.
You know that fresh lick of paint they promise? That's what you get. A single coat of paint. And every third time it's 3 coats. That new carpet? Commercial. And even they've even said it's not suitable, just cheap.
I don't know what impact the Residential Tenancies Act has as far as owners of properties of schemese such as what DHA offers, but I do know DHA are of the belief they are NOT required to act in accordance with it, that they have an exemption. I don't know about anywhere else in the country nowadays, but back in the late 90's there was a court case in NSW that proved they were. Look it up on the Australian Government Soliciters website, the OWNER of the property that took them to court was Henderson. I do know that currently (confirmed yesterday) that there is no exemption for them in Western Australia.
If you really want to hear what tenants have to say about DHA and the way they manage properties, there is a Facebook Group called I Hate DHA. So many stories come out on there it can really give you a good picture of what they're like once they've got your house.