Property experts say a “dizzying” report forecasting the impacts of worsening climate conditions on Australian properties has sounded a clear warning for the housing sector: homes need to be made more resilient.
While home owners are being assured their property values won’t “collapse overnight”, industry experts are encouraging them to future proof their homes — and their worth — by building or retrofitting them to withstand the elements.
Earlier this week, the national climate risk assessment published a report deeming one million homes across the country would effectively be uninsurable by 2050. It also forecast losses in property values could reach $611 billion across the country that same year.
The report states up to 185,000 Queensland residential buildings could be deemed in “very high-risk areas” for flood, cyclone, bushfire, or heat-wave threats, depending on how much warming occurs.
Report highlights climate risk for Queensland
“Climate impacts include disruptions in business operations, potential economic losses, and reduced property values,” the report said.
First National Real Estate corporate affairs manager Stewart Bunn said the areas of risk highlighted in the report are known to be disaster-prone by home owners.
“The figures in the report are dizzying and it’s difficult for us all to make sense of exactly how this is going to impact on us and when,” he said.
“I don’t think it dramatically changes what we already understand about the challenges of certain locations … it does however help us to understand the factors that influence home values and how they might change.”
Homes in Townsville were surrounded by water during flooding earlier this year. (ABC North Qld: Georgia Loney)
One of the factors home owners should consider, according to Mr Bunn, was their home’s “liveability”.
“If you are in a flood plain, making sure your utilities aren’t on the lower level of the house. Your electricity power board should be moved to the level above,” he said.
“I think we will start to see more importance placed on homes with better shading, better ventilation, good air-conditioning systems that are efficient, solar systems that incorporate batteries, and obviously building materials that are resilient to the environmental factors we will be seeing.”
Residents in some Brisbane suburbs sandbagged their properties in March ahead of Tropical Cyclone Alfred. (ABC News: Esther Linder)
Upgrading old homes a ‘key challenge’
Real Estate Institute of Queensland chief executive Antonia Mercorella said the demand for homes in disaster-prone areas of the state will not change.
“Reports like this are important, just like flood mapping in Queensland is equally important,” she said.
“But I think this idea that people will immediately stop buying in a particular suburb or location doesn’t necessarily match the reality of what we see in the market.
“I think it really reinforces the need for us to be thinking about how we can be building more resilient dwellings, to respond and adapt to our ever-changing climate conditions.”
Antonia Mercorella says the findings highlight the need to build more resilient dwellings. (ABC News: Lucas Hill)
In the wake of the report, Queensland’s peak construction body Master Builders said there was stringent regulation to ensure new homes were built to withstand the weather in their region.
“There’s also a process in place of making sure those standards remain up to date as the climate changes — that’s for new housing stock,” executive manager Michael Hopkins said.
“Upgrading our existing housing stock is actually the key challenge because a lot of those homes are much older and wouldn’t necessarily meet current day National Construction Code.”
More than 10,000 Brisbane properties to be added to Brisbane flood maps
Mr Hopkins encouraged Queenslanders with older builds, which was “the vast majority of housing” across the state, to retrofit their properties.
“The Queensland government has lots of information publicly available to help home owners with this,” he said.
“If home owners are looking to do a renovation or an alteration then certainly consult with their designer and builder early about what regulations they’re going to need to comply with.”
‘Gentle deflation’ of property prices
Mr Bunn said while natural disasters may cause rates of population growth in some areas to slow down, home owners were not likely to feel the immediate blow in terms of property prices.
“There’s going to be a continual mix of supply and demand pressures exerting themselves on the Australian marketplace and I think this is why we can expect we’re not going to see a whole scale collapse of home values,” he said.
“We will just see a gentle deflation of the rate in some areas where the prices are increasing … not that they’ll collapse overnight.”
The north Queensland town of Ingham flooded in the first week of February 2025. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)
Mr Bunn said home insurance prices could also go up, and banks may tighten lending criteria when extreme weather events play out.
“Another factor would be disclosure — this is a big one,” he said.
“Buyers, tenants, and body corporates will expect clear disclosure of the known hazards around them, and any sort of mitigation works that are underway to impact on that.”
