Flooding won’t leave lasting imprint on market – experts say

Two property professionals have offered reassurance to investors that the flooding currently impacting South-East Queensland is not expected to impact the long-term Brisbane housing market.

In spite of a downturn in prices seen following the 2011 floods, Pete Wargent, co-founder of BuyersBuyers Australia, stated that detached houses in the Brisbane region experienced a 25 per cent price increase in the subsequent five years. He predicts that this cycle will be repeated again after this year’s flooding event.

“Over the medium and longer-term, history shows that there will be a relatively insignificant impact on the housing market,” he said.

Similar to the period after 2011, BuyersBuyers chief executive Doron Peleg believes the current flood crisis will eventually become a distant memory for the Brisbane housing market.

“There was a perception after the [2011] floods that flood-prone areas might be perceived negatively or experience poor capital growth, but that did not prove to be the case,” Mr Peleg said 

Key to the market’s substantial rebound in 2011 was the fact that in most cases, buyers were able to largely overlook the “infrequent” risk of flooding in order to acquire a water-side property.

Continuing, he said, “a few years ago, our market research showed that out [of] the top 20 suburbs impacted by floods in 2011, nineteen of them outperformed the Brisbane house price growth benchmark over the following five years.”

The exception to these findings was the north-eastern Brisbane suburb, Pinkenba, which had its pricing impact by other factors, notably its proximity to the airport.