Investor · Developer · Coach
Real estate advisor to Vanderburgh Sober Living. She finds the buildings, works out how to pay for them, and turns them into homes people can recover in.
Credentials
A real estate practice built around a question most investors never ask: who lives here afterward?
14+
Properties Developed
2020
Investing Since
210+
Residents Served
Multi-State
Portfolio Footprint
Development
Mission-aligned residential properties acquired, financed, renovated, and placed with operators across New England and the East Coast since 2020.
Company
Her own firm, based in Massachusetts, focused on affordable and impact-driven residential investment. Recovery housing is the largest part of the portfolio.
Education
Bachelor of Business Administration in management from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Deal Work
Sourcing, underwriting, financing, renovation, and the operator partnership at the end of it. She works the whole chain rather than one link of it.
Teaching
Coaches Launchpad and Mastery members through their first acquisitions, teaching the financing and renovation decisions that decide whether a home survives its first year.
Advisory
Consulted for Honeybee Financial, a private lender, on development feasibility and deal structure from 2020 to 2023, and has consulted for A Beacon of Light recovery homes in North Carolina.
Partnership
Homes are underwritten around long-term leases with vetted recovery housing operators, which is what makes the returns steady and the housing stable at the same time.
Biography
Michelle Ngila came to the United States from Kenya and started buying real estate in 2020. Within a few years she had built one of the fastest-growing portfolios of impact-focused residential property in New England.
She is the founder of Worcester Services, LLC and the real estate advisor to Vanderburgh Sober Living. Her portfolio has grown past fourteen mission-aligned properties, operating as recovery residences and transitional housing, and has served more than 210 residents.
The path there was not obvious. As a newer investor she was competing against established developers in crowded markets, and the usual playbook did not leave much room for someone without a decade of relationships. What she found instead was a category most investors were ignoring: housing for people leaving treatment, where demand was steady, the leases were long, and almost nobody was building anything decent. She partnered with VSL for sourcing, financing structure, and operator matching, and scaled from there across multiple states.
The work has not all been her own portfolio. From 2020 to 2023 she consulted for Honeybee Financial, a private lender, on development feasibility and how to structure deals in a category most underwriters had never seen before, and she has consulted for A Beacon of Light recovery homes in North Carolina. Three years on the lender side of the table changed how she reads a deal from the borrower side.
That experience is now most of what she brings to VSL. She works with members on acquisitions, financing, renovation scope, and the operator partnerships that come after the closing, and she is candid about the parts that go wrong, which is generally more useful than the parts that go right. Her own homes are leased to vetted operators on long-term terms, an arrangement that keeps the cash flow predictable for the owner and the housing stable for the residents.
She is direct about why the structure matters as much as the intention. A recovery home that cannot pay its own mortgage closes, and when it closes the residents go somewhere worse.
What She Does
Four things decide whether a recovery housing deal works. She spends her time on all four.
Finding buildings that suit shared living before the market prices them as something else. Layout, bedroom count, parking, and neighborhood context matter more here than they do in a conventional rental.
Assembling the capital stack for properties that conventional lenders do not always understand, and structuring the deal so the debt service survives a slow lease-up.
Scoping the work that turns a single-family house into a compliant, durable recovery residence, and knowing which upgrades pay for themselves and which are money spent on appearances.
Matching each property with an operator equipped to run it, then structuring a long-term lease that holds up for both sides.
Approach
Impact and return are usually presented as a trade. In this asset class they are not.
Recovery housing tends to attract two kinds of people: investors who see steady rent and never think about the residents, and advocates who care deeply and cannot make the numbers work. Michelle’s argument is that both fail for the same reason, which is that they treat the mission and the model as separate problems.
Her properties are underwritten as real estate, with real reserves and real assumptions about vacancy and turnover. They are also designed as places people live during the hardest stretch of their lives. Neither part is decoration for the other.
“A home that cannot pay for itself is not a mission. It is a countdown.”
Experience
Real estate and recovery housing, in the order it happened.
Impact real estate
A Massachusetts-based real estate investment and development firm focused on affordable and mission-driven residential property. More than fourteen properties developed across New England and the East Coast, the majority operating as recovery residences or transitional housing, serving more than 210 residents.
vanderburghhouse.com
Advises on real estate strategy and coaches Launchpad and Mastery members through acquisition, financing, renovation, and operator partnership, translating the sober living model into housing projects that are financially sustainable and mission-aligned.
Private lending
Consulted for a private lender on development feasibility and deal structure for residential and recovery housing projects, assessing what a property could carry and how to underwrite an asset class most conventional lenders were unfamiliar with.
Recovery housing
Consulting work with a North Carolina recovery housing operator on property and development questions, extending her New England experience into a different regulatory and market environment.
Questions
Michelle Ngila is the real estate advisor to Vanderburgh Sober Living and the founder of Worcester Services, LLC. She is an impact real estate investor and recovery housing developer who has built more than fourteen mission-aligned residential properties across New England and the East Coast.
She advises on real estate strategy and coaches members through property acquisition, financing, renovation, and the operator partnerships that follow, drawing on her own portfolio rather than on theory.
More than fourteen properties developed since 2020, operating as recovery residences and transitional housing, and serving more than 210 residents.
She consulted for Honeybee Financial, a private lender, on development feasibility and deal structure from 2020 to 2023, and has consulted for A Beacon of Light recovery homes in North Carolina.
She immigrated to the United States from Kenya and began investing in real estate in 2020. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in management from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She coaches members of the Vanderburgh Sober Living Launchpad and Mastery programs on real estate acquisition, financing, and operator partnerships. Start with the Launchpad program to work with her directly.
Next Step
Looking at a property, or wondering whether recovery housing belongs in your portfolio?
Tell us where you are and what you are trying to build. We will tell you honestly whether the numbers work, what the property needs, and who could run it.
No cost, no obligation. We come back within one business day.
Investor. Developer. Coach.
Building housing that pays for itself and holds people up.
Michelle Ngila is the real estate advisor to Vanderburgh Sober Living, a cooperative network of independently operated sober living homes organized by The Vanderburgh Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation based in Webster, Massachusetts.
