The maps that show how climate change is driving up the cost of insuring Melbourne homes
Pascoe says that after the damaging storms, weakened trees continue to come down on Mount Dandenong, disrupting power lines and people's lives.
She and her partner have had to reimburse guests on multiple occasions when power outages hit.
'People are not properly compensated,' she said. 'There's often businesses that are throwing out produce; people have generators and have to rely on that ... and our [business's] insurance is far more expensive than it was before the storm.'
Data collected exclusively for this masthead from about 40,000 online quotes for building insurance premiums in Melbourne suburbs, compiled by actuary and insurance consultants Finity, shows Pascoe's experience is far from isolated.
Finity collected quotes from eight insurers over a six-year period across metropolitan Melbourne, representing the amount that customers would pay if they were taking on a new building insurance policy for a typical risk profile in the local government area.
Principal Stephen Lau said the most expensive climate-related events in the past 40 to 50 years, from an insurance perspective, were floods, bushfires and the 1999 Sydney hailstorm that caused $8.9 billion in normalised losses (adjusted for inflation, exposure and building stock).
'And that's then passed back down to consumers ... if there's higher reinsurance risks, they pass down higher reinsurance costs.'
While Black Saturday and Black Summer had increased insurance premiums, Lau said the most expensive climatic event from a normative loss basis were the 1999 hailstorms.
Rounding out the top three were the 2022-23 floods across south-eastern Australia, and the Black Summer bushfires.
In Melbourne, the municipality with the lowest average insurance premiums was Whitehorse, which had an average insurance premium of $1609 – almost three times lower than the Yarra Ranges Shire.
Lau said the Bayside, Stonnington and Port Phillip local government areas had higher-than-average premiums due largely to the higher cost of housing and larger-than-average property values insured.
Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall called for a 10-year, $30 billion flood defence fund that would be jointly funded by federal and state governments, to develop flood defences, retrofit homes and relocate people where no other mitigation was possible.
'The cost of extreme weather is growing,' he said. 'Over the past five years, the annual average insured cost of extreme weather has reached $4.5 billion [nationwide], 64 per cent higher than the previous five-year average.
'This trend is expected to worsen, which is why we must invest in risk reduction, mitigation and adaptation.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
5 days ago
- The Age
The NSW holiday town that is much cheaper than five years ago
Renting a house in Malua Bay costs about a third less now than it did five years ago, when demand for properties jumped temporarily after the devastating Black Summer bushfires and pandemic-era tree-changers moved in, helping to inflate prices in the coastal enclave. The median weekly rent for a house in Malua Bay, just south of Batemans Bay and almost three hours south of Wollongong, fell by 31.4 per cent in the five years to March, to $618, on Domain data. This was the steepest rental drop of all of NSW's regional towns over this time and came after a price uptick that wasn't to last. The 10 slowest movers for house rents in regional areas span other seaside suburbs, including Mollymook Beach, which was down 24 per cent over five years. The rise in rental costs came after a period marked by significant events, Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said. 'Malua Bay was impacted by the bushfires that saw a lot of the Eurobodalla location, which is where Malua Bay sits, being devastated,' she said. The 2019-2020 bushfire season ravaged the NSW South Coast region, including Malua Bay, where some properties, a stroll from the beach, were destroyed. Rents in the region probably jumped after the bushfires as displaced people would have gone into temporary accommodation, Powell said. 'I think probably what we have seen is a vast impact over that four-year period where we saw the bushfires impact, rebuilding occurring, displacement of families, a shifting in demand, not only in the rent space, but also in the for-sale [space],' she said. Malua Bay, where many homes have ocean views, has been popular with retirees over the years, with some now looking to sell. There is a bowling club that burnt down during the bushfires, and has now been rebuilt, as well as cafes and a coastal reserve.
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The NSW holiday town that is much cheaper than five years ago
Renting a house in Malua Bay costs about a third less now than it did five years ago, when demand for properties jumped temporarily after the devastating Black Summer bushfires and pandemic-era tree-changers moved in, helping to inflate prices in the coastal enclave. The median weekly rent for a house in Malua Bay, just south of Batemans Bay and almost three hours south of Wollongong, fell by 31.4 per cent in the five years to March, to $618, on Domain data. This was the steepest rental drop of all of NSW's regional towns over this time and came after a price uptick that wasn't to last. The 10 slowest movers for house rents in regional areas span other seaside suburbs, including Mollymook Beach, which was down 24 per cent over five years. The rise in rental costs came after a period marked by significant events, Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said. 'Malua Bay was impacted by the bushfires that saw a lot of the Eurobodalla location, which is where Malua Bay sits, being devastated,' she said. The 2019-2020 bushfire season ravaged the NSW South Coast region, including Malua Bay, where some properties, a stroll from the beach, were destroyed. Rents in the region probably jumped after the bushfires as displaced people would have gone into temporary accommodation, Powell said. 'I think probably what we have seen is a vast impact over that four-year period where we saw the bushfires impact, rebuilding occurring, displacement of families, a shifting in demand, not only in the rent space, but also in the for-sale [space],' she said. Malua Bay, where many homes have ocean views, has been popular with retirees over the years, with some now looking to sell. There is a bowling club that burnt down during the bushfires, and has now been rebuilt, as well as cafes and a coastal reserve.
The Age
24-06-2025
- The Age
NSW budget 2025 LIVE updates: Treasurer Daniel Mookhey set to hand down third state budget
Go to latest Welcome to our rolling NSW budget coverage Penry Buckley Hello, and welcome to The Sydney Morning Herald 's live coverage of the 2025-26 NSW budget. I'm Penry Buckley and I'll be with you all day as NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey prepares to hand down his third state budget at 12pm. Don't know your revenue from your expenditure? Unfazed by the federal budget? Here's why you should get excited about the state offering. For a start, NSW has the biggest economy of any state in Australia, significantly larger than the ACT or Queensland, which also have their budget days this week. If it were its own country, NSW would be one of the 40 largest economies worldwide, so how the $120 billion annual budget is spent is of some consequence. It also contains key promises that directly impact lives in NSW, across the portfolios of housing, health and education. We've already had some sense of what's in store, but stay with us as we reveal the full breakdown. 10.55am Will this year's budget deliver a surplus? By Penry Buckley As with the federal budget, the ultimate kudos for any sitting government is to deliver a surplus, although NSW hasn't had one since the Berejiklian government's 2018-19 budget. This year will likely be no different, not helped by the government's failure to push through controversial workers' compensation reforms. Mookhey delivered a $9.7 billion deficit in his first budget. His hopes of a slim surplus last year were thwarted by the GST carve-up in which NSW received $1.9 billion less, and an unfortunate accounting error that resulted in Sydney Metro property sales being counted twice, a miscalculation of $1 billion. Originally forecast at $3.6 billion, a cost blow-out of $1.4 billion brought the total deficit from last year to just under $5 billion, according to the government's mid-year review. However, the state economy is showing signs of improvement – this morning the Herald reported this year's budget will deliver a gross debt improvement of $9.4 billion on the former Coalition government's 2023 projections, reducing interest payments by $400 million by June 2026. Mookhey has also told the Financial Review he expects a small cash surplus this year, meaning daily spending is no longer creating debt, but capital expenditure may still result in an overall deficit, predicted in December to be about $2.2 billion. 10.45am What we know about the budget so far By Penry Buckley The Minns government's third budget is likely to follow the fiscal restraint of the first two. That's not least because the government failed to push through its controversial workers' compensation reforms this month, which Mookhey has claimed would save billions of dollars. As our state political editor, Alexandra Smith, reported this morning, there's also a heavy burden from relief payments, which have been hit by a 10-fold increase from worsening natural disasters since the Black Summer bushfires. Essential services and housing will be front and centre this year. At his budget preview speech last month, the treasurer spoke of the 'need to build, build, build'. The government has already released one of this budget's flagship housing policies, to indefinitely extend a 50 per cent tax break for eligible build-to-rent developments. There's also a record $9 billion investment in school infrastructure over four years, $492 million for a state-of-the-art pathology service in western Sydney, and $452 million to increase bus services, including 50 new 'bendy' buses. You can read the rest of the promises the government has already made public over the past few weeks in this handy list here.
