00:02Overall, we're seeing that Australia has seen an increase of more than 50% in home insurance
00:08premiums over the past five years, and that is till October 2025.
00:13Now, obviously, there's been a range of prices across the capital city.
00:17So we've got Darwin is now paying more than $4,000 a year, and Adelaide is paying just
00:23over $2,000 a year, and then all the other capital cities sort of sit within that framework.
00:30But when we look at the area that's paying the most, that is Brisbane's West, and their
00:36homeowners are paying nearly $8,400 a year.
00:40And then we see the Blue Mountains region, their homeowners are paying nearly $5,300 a
00:46year.
00:46So I did speak to a couple out in the Blue Mountains region area, and they said, yeah, they very
00:52much felt the increase.
00:55So we started off in terms of our insurance cost around $2,500.
01:03Our insurance cost is now just over $5,000.
01:08So we've had that sort of almost doubling.
01:11So you've looked into these numbers, Adelaide.
01:14What are some of the reasons behind this?
01:15So there's two main reasons.
01:17The first one being natural disasters.
01:19That's the biggest driver of these premiums.
01:22And so the capital cities or the states and territories across the country that pay the
01:26most are the ones that are most affected by, you know, floods or fires.
01:31But also the increase in building costs, which we have seen rise since COVID times.
01:37There was one woman that I spoke to in Brisbane who was quoted $70,000 a year for home insurance.
01:46And that's because she was affected by the 2011 and 2022 floods.
01:52Obviously, she didn't take that option because it's just far too expensive.
01:57And the Actuaries Institute is saying that about 15% of households across the country cannot
02:03afford home insurance at the moment.
02:04It's wild, isn't it, to think that you're uninsurable.
02:07So what can be done to support homeowners?
02:10So there is an initiative at the moment.
02:13It's a free initiative by the Resilience Building Council who are working with households across
02:18Australia to basically make their home more resilient or more, I guess, sturdy when it
02:26comes to natural disasters.
02:27So, you know, things like making sure that they don't have overgrown trees in areas where
02:34there's fires or that their home's elevated in flood areas.
02:39And what that can also do is actually shave off some of the price of your premiums.
02:46So the Paul and Denise Cameron, who we just saw before, they were able to take off $500 a
02:51year from their premium because they had made their home with fires in mind.
02:56But the CEO of the Resilience Building Council, Kate Cotter, she says that more is needed to
03:02be done because the trajectory is only going in one direction.
03:06And I guess it's quite difficult to retrofit some of these homes that aren't new builds.
03:10Really interesting work there, Adelaide.
Comments