Community clean-up efforts continue for residents of Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales following the damage left by Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The storm – a level one cyclone – hit the East Coast of Australia over the course of last week and during the weekend, leaving a trail of power outages, flash floods, extreme winds and untold numbers of property damage claims.
Despite the upheaval, some market players were quick to say the storm likely won't have any long-term impacts on property prices, and were quick to dismiss the weather events as a standard part of life in a tropical locale.
But Tim Lawless, head of research at CoreLogic Asia Pacific, said other factors could impact the economy of Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales going forward.
"My guess … the impact of more frequent severe weather events is probably starting to play on people's minds," the economist told Bluestone's chief commercial officer Tony MacRae during a panel event in Sydney this week.
"Previously, [severe weather] doesn't seem to have had a long-term impact [on the market]," Lawless said. "But I think, if we start seeing other factors, like insurance premiums becoming prohibitively expensive, or potentially even more difficult to secure insurance in some areas, that's where you start to see changes in [borrower] behaviour.
"The insurance premiums have already gone up for these areas," he said. "But once they become out of reach for the mainstream market, that's probably where you start to see behaviors change. So maybe we're on the cusp of that now, because of the frequency of these events.
"As well as the fact that we've seen significant [weather] events now in the state [of Queensland] more than every 10 years," Lawless said. "These events used to be called one-in-every-100-year events. That certainly doesn't seem to be the case anymore. So over the next five or 10 years, if we continue to see this pattern of frequency and severity, it probably does mean we will see some reluctance [from buyers].”
"Looking at historical analysis, there are price pressures after a severe weather event like this, with flooding. But in the past, it hasn't taken long for the markets to recover," Lawless said.
One example is the 2022 Australian floods, which also hit Southeast Queensland and coastal NSW. After the storms, property prices in the area took a short-term dip, but the market quickly rebounded. Meanwhile, some homes, which were untouched by the floods, grew in value.
"[That] was also a time [like present] when the market had just come through a massive phase of growth in Southeast Queensland, and interest rates started to rise in the middle of the year, which puts some pressure on price as well," Lawless said. "Absolutely, part of [the pricing pressures] have been related to the severe weather events. [But] it's always hard to separate out the impact of severe weather damage and just the market cycle as well.
"After the 2011 floods in Brisbane, and after the 2022 floods in Brisbane and Northern New South Wales, absolutely the markets were negatively impacted. But it didn't last very long. Within two years, we've seen values recover in those marketplaces and they're generally back to new record highs in most of those regions," he said. "We're kind of in a simple position now [in 2025] where we've just come through a growth phase, interest rates are starting to come down. But yeah, I think you probably will see some short-lived damage pressure and maybe some top-of-mind weariness of buying in the markets that have recently flooded, as well.
"I think this is a real reminder of this frequency and the severity of weather events, particularly in tropical markets," Lawless said. "Australians tend to have an ongoing love affair with living close to areas that have coastal erosion and floods, particularly close to the coastline."
