Assessing flood impacts on the regional property markets Queensland, Australia

Weather-related disasters such as floods have become more frequent over the last fifty years in regional communities of Queensland. Between December 2010 and January 2011, three-quarters of Queensland was declared as a disaster zone as a result of flooding. The Central Queensland (CQ) region was severely affected by this flood. To assess potential impacts on property markets, this study examined flood impacts through a case study of Rockhampton within the CQ region by using longitudinal data of the number of quarterly sales and median property price of all three segments of property market (i.e., total house sales, new house and land package sales, and land only sales), before and after the 2011 flood. In addition this study tested changes in the number of sales with a key regional economic impact i.e., mining boom, to test whether the flood impact has been offset by impacts of growth in the mining sector. This study found that flooding has affected the total number of house sales compared to the other two housing submarkets, and also that the flood impact has been relatively offset by the impact of mining.