APN Research Brief: The $611 Billion Climate Threat to Australian Property Values

In September 2025, the Australian Climate Service released the country’s first National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) — a synthesis of input from hundreds of scientists and experts across eleven priority risk areas, including infrastructure and the built environment, and the economy, trade and finance. Its headline property figure has since been repeated across government, industry and media commentary: $611 billion in projected property value losses by 2050.

This brief examines four things about that figure and the analysis surrounding it. First, what the $611 billion projection actually covers, and how consistently it has been cited since release. Second, a commonly confused population figure in the same report — 1.5 million people, not homes, at risk of coastal flooding — and a separate, distinct estimate of one million uninsurable homes that comes from industry commentary rather than the government report itself. Third, an independent market analysis from PropTrack and the Climate Council that puts a live, current-day figure on part of this risk: $42.2 billion already discounted into today’s flood-exposed property values, ahead of any 2050 projection. Fourth, why the housing construction industry’s own peak body says the fix has to start with Australia’s 8–10 million older dwellings — a figure absent from the government’s own report and traced instead to industry commentary made in response to it.

• $611 billion — the NCRA’s projected national loss in property value by 2050, from all assessed climate hazards combined.
• 1.5 million people — the NCRA’s coastal flooding and sea-level rise exposure figure by 2050; this is a population count, not a dwelling count.
• $42.2 billion — PropTrack and the Climate Council’s calculation of the value already lost to flood risk in today’s market, not a future projection.
• 8–10 million older dwellings — the housing stock the Housing Industry Association identifies as the country’s priority retrofit target.

The foundational source for the $611 billion figure is “Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment Report 2025,” authored by the Australian Climate Service (ACS) and released in September 2025. It is the first assessment of its kind conducted by the federal government, drawing on hundreds of scientists and experts to assess risk across eleven priority areas — among them “Infrastructure and the built environment” and the “Economy, trade and finance.”

Commentary and analysis published in the months following the report’s release have consistently cited the same figure and the same 2050 timeline, establishing it as the accepted headline number for the property sector:

• University of Tasmania: “Extreme weather will lead to property damage and loss of homes… Loss on property values are estimated to reach A$611 billion by 2050.”
• Climate Council: “Property values could take a half-trillion dollar hit… Losses to property values could increase to: 2050: $611 billion.”
• Climate Adaptation Platform: “Property values could decline by more than AU$611 billion by 2050.”
• API Magazine: “…a harrowing report… portrays a not-too-distant future where a million homes will be uninsurable and national property values would’ve lost $611 billion in value.”

The consistency of that citation across independent outlets — a university, a climate research body, an adaptation-policy platform and an industry trade publication — is what makes $611 billion the established reference figure for climate-related property devaluation in Australia. It is also the same order of risk that the APN Climate-Risk Asset Devaluation Index™ (24500) is built to track at the individual-property level, translating a national 2050 projection into a certified reading for a given location today.

A second NCRA figure is frequently cited alongside the $611 billion headline, and it is easy to misread: “1.5 million.” It does not refer to high-risk homes. It refers to people. The report’s own executive summary is explicit on this point:

“If populations remained as they are today, this would equate to >1.5 million people living in areas that will experience sea level rise and coastal flooding risks by 2050.” (NCRA, p. iii)

Every other high-quality analysis of the report treats the figure the same way:

• PreventionWeb: “…1.5 million people in coastal communities… could be in high and very high risk areas for coastal flooding and erosion by 2050.”
• Australian Climate Service: “…this would equate to >1.5 million people living in areas that will experience sea level rise and coastal flooding risks by 2050.”
• The Guardian: “One headline figure from the report is that by 2050, more than 1.5 million people would be living in areas around the country that would be hit by rising sea levels and coastal flooding.”

A separate and distinct figure — one million homes uninsurable by 2050 — appears in commentary on the report (API Magazine, cited above), but it is not the same statistic and does not come from the NCRA itself. The two figures measure different things: one is population exposure to coastal risk, the other is a dwelling-level insurability estimate made by commentators reacting to the report. Any modelling that treats “1.5 million” as a dwelling count rather than a population count will overstate the coastal-exposure figure and should be corrected against the NCRA’s own wording above.

In October 2025, PropTrack — the property data arm of REA Group — published a joint report with the Climate Council that explicitly accepts the NCRA’s $611 billion figure as the accepted long-term projection, then goes further by measuring what flood risk is doing to property values today:

“The Australian Government’s National Climate Risk Assessment, released in September 2025, forecasted that Australian property values could face $611 billion in losses by 2050. In comparison, this analysis identifies the current, realised impact of flood risk on property values.”

Rather than modelling a future scenario, PropTrack’s methodology is built on realised market data: it combines Geoscape’s flood risk mapping with PropTrack’s own property data, including its realEstimate valuation model and Market Insights dataset. On that basis, the report quantifies a current value gap of $42.2 billion attributable to flood risk alone:

“In regions where flood risk reduces property values, these homes are collectively worth $42.2 billion less than they would have been in the absence of flood risk…”

The report describes this gap as a “structural, persistent discount at the property level,” noting that ordinary price growth over time is not enough to erase the penalty associated with flood risk — in many areas, the gap is widening rather than closing. The effect is not evenly spread: in Chelmer-Graceville, Queensland, the report finds an average value loss of 10.6%, or roughly $303,000 per property.

Read together, the two figures describe a “two-speed” risk that is more convincing than either number alone. The $611 billion NCRA projection is the macro-scale estimate of loss from all climate hazards combined, by 2050. The $42.2 billion PropTrack figure is a live, present-day measurement of the same underlying mechanism, isolated to flood risk in mapped zones. The second figure is effectively proof that the first is not a distant, hypothetical cost — a comparable discount is already showing up in sale prices now.

Both reports point to the same underlying transmission mechanism: climate risk devalues property primarily through insurance and lending markets, not simply through the physical cost of repairing storm or flood damage. The NCRA itself is direct on this point in several places:

• On insurance costs (p. iii): “Extreme events will lead to property damage, increased insurance costs and even loss of homes…”
• On uninsurability (p. 48): “Chronic sea level rise will increasingly place pressure on coastal property values and may have an impact on coverage of insurance in highly exposed communities. For example, many insurance policies exclude coverage for ‘actions of the sea’…”
• On asset values (p. 98): “These extreme weather events are resulting in increasing insurance costs in some areas… reduced asset values for households…”
• On lending and mortgages (p. 98): “Higher insurance premiums and increasing noninsurance and under-insurance,” listed alongside “Increasingly limited access to loans and mortgages.”
• On systemic risk (p. 102): The disaster-cost and insurance outlook for the economy, trade and finance system is rated “Severe for 2090.”

PropTrack’s co-author commentary ties its $42.2 billion “structural, persistent discount” directly to the same mechanism: “…the lower value reflects a risk of significant future costs like higher insurance premiums and property damages.” In other words, the discount buyers and valuers are already applying to flood-exposed property is a forward-looking financial-risk price, not a repair-cost estimate.

Industry and legal commentary reinforces the same link between the $611 billion figure and insurance markets specifically. API Magazine connects the projection to “a million homes will be uninsurable” and to “projects that cannot be built due to the inability to insure them.” Norton Rose Fulbright’s analysis links the same “$611 billion” devaluation figure to “unaffordable insurance products.” The University of Tasmania’s coverage notes plainly that “insurance may become unaffordable in exposed areas.” Ashurst’s market commentary broadens the point to financing generally: “A failure to act now will mean… investors and funders will find… stranded assets… increased cost of borrowing, lending restrictions and higher insurance premiums.”

Together, this evidence describes a consistent causal chain: escalating physical climate hazard leads insurers and lenders to reprice or withdraw cover and credit in exposed areas, which shows up first as a realised discount in today’s flood-affected markets (the $42.2 billion figure), and compounds toward the $611 billion national projection by 2050 as more areas and hazard types are drawn into the same dynamic.

A widely cited figure in commentary around the NCRA’s release is that Australia has “8–10 million older dwellings” in need of climate resilience upgrades. A direct search of the primary NCRA report text for this figure, or for the terms “retrofitting” or “existing stock,” returns NIL RETURN — the number does not originate from the government’s own assessment.

Instead, the figure comes from industry commentary made in response to the NCRA, most specifically from Insurance News, which reports: “While new homes already meet high and improving standards, the country’s 8–10 million older dwellings remain the most exposed to extreme weather and require targeted action to lift their resilience.”

The figure is directly attributed to Mr Simon Croft, Chief Executive for Industry and Policy at the Housing Industry Association (HIA) — the peak body for residential construction in Australia — provided as part of HIA’s commentary on the NCRA findings and as part of a Senate Inquiry into the Climate Risk Assessment. Mr Croft’s fuller statement makes the industry’s case directly:

“The greatest opportunity in mitigating climate change lies in upgrading Australia’s existing housing stock,” Mr Croft said. “…the country’s 8-10 million older dwellings remain the most exposed… and require targeted action to lift their resilience.”

The distinction matters. The NCRA, a government assessment, defines the scale of the risk. The HIA, representing the industry responsible for building and retrofitting housing, has separately and publicly defined where it believes the response should start. That alignment between a government risk assessment and the construction industry’s own stated investment priority is precisely the ground the APN Substrate™ (Climate Resilience Rating) — node 24150 — is built to measure at the individual-property and locality level, rating existing dwellings against the resilience standard the industry itself says needs lifting.

Table 1: Core Figures

Table 2: Key Verifying Quotes

1. Is this Australia’s climate wake-up call? Official report reveals a hotter, harder future if we don’t act now | University of Tasmania, accessed November 2025.
2. Compounding climate risk: New government report warns that …, accessed November 2025.
3. Australia’s Climate Risks Assessment Shows What Future Holds, accessed November 2025.
4. Bleak climate report points to property market wipeout, uninsurable …, accessed November 2025.
5. Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment – Newsreel, accessed November 2025.
6. Property Value Flood Risk Report | REA Group, accessed November 2025.
7. How flood risk is reshaping property values – realestate.com.au, accessed November 2025.
8. ‘Structural discount’: True impact of flood risk on property prices …, accessed November 2025.
9. Australian homes fall short on flood protection: Housing Industry …, accessed November 2025.
10. Insurance News Link, accessed November 2025.
11. Assessing Australia’s climate risks – DCCEEW, accessed November 2025.
12. Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment – AWS, accessed November 2025.
13. National Climate Risk Assessment | Australian Climate Service …, accessed November 2025.
14. Australia: National climate risk assessment – PreventionWeb.net, accessed November 2025.
15. New climate report warns property prices face a $611 billion hit. What does that mean?, accessed November 2025.
16. NCRA Climate risks, accessed November 2025.
17. ‘Cascading, compounding’: five key takeaways from Australia’s national climate risk assessment – The Guardian, accessed November 2025.
18. Flood risk causing ripple effects on property values according to market-first national analysis PropTrack, in partnership with – Public now, accessed November 2025.
19. REA Group Ltd, accessed November 2025.
20. Australian Government releases 2035 target and other national …, accessed November 2025.
21. National Climate Risk Assessment – First pass assessment report – DCCEEW, accessed November 2025.
22. Real Estate in 2022 Making the transition to net zero a reality – Ashurst, accessed November 2025.
23. What will happen to companies that don’t pursue the green route | CBRE Australia, accessed November 2025.
24. Brown discounts, not green premiums, are driving real estate sustainability, say managers, accessed November 2025.
25. AWS Link, accessed November 2025.
26. Chapter 3 – Parliament of Australia, accessed November 2025.