Home Insurance for North Queensland

Home insurance is designed to cover you financially should something happen to your home and/or belongings. There are three main types of home insurance:

• Building insurance: Covers the building itself and the fixtures.
• Contents insurance: Covers the personal belongings in your home.
• Home and contents insurance: Covers both the building and fixtures as well as personal belongings.

Landlord insurance is another type of insurance that is designed to cover investors who rent out their properties to tenants. It may include extra cover for risks such as malicious damage by a tenant, or the costs of evicting them.

Your choice of of home insurance product generally depends on a few factors, such as:

• what you want to insure, such as just the building or just its contents, or both
• how much cover you need, which means how much money you would need to be paid out to cover your expenses if you needed to make a claim
• what type of events you want to cover your property for, such as floods, cyclones, breakage, motor burnout, and/or loss or theft of portable items
• if you own the property or are a renter.

The cost of home insurance for North Queensland varies significantly between individual street addresses, postcode areas and housing types, as well as other factors. To give you a broad idea of the potential cost, the Canstar Research Team has compiled the following general estimates, based on research carried out for the Canstar’s Home and Contents Insurance Awards and Star Ratings.

All North Queensland (above Rockhampton)

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Source: www.canstar.com.au. September 2023. Premiums based on home and contents policies rated in the Canstar 2023 Home and Contents Insurance Awards and Star Ratings, for a range of addresses, property assumptions and building sum insured amounts. Premiums based on building sum insured amounts between $200k and $1.8m and a contents sum insured of $50k. North Queensland includes all areas north of, but not including, Rockhampton.

Additionally, the Australian Government has compiled insurance cost information based on a selection of postcodes, as part of its North Queensland Home Insurance initiative. The information comes from indicative quotes collected from a select few insurance providers, and does not include all North Queensland home insurers. The site also defines Rockhampton as being part of North Queensland, using the Tropic of Capricorn as the border. For more information, read the site’s FAQs.

North Queensland is a place of great beauty, from the Great Barrier Reef to the majesty of the Daintree Rainforest. But it is also a place that regularly takes a battering from nature, with the north of the state particularly susceptible to cyclones and storm surges.

With this historical trend and the predicted increase in weather event severity due to climate change, means that some properties in Northern Queensland that are considered at risk may be more expensive and more difficult to purchase a home insurance policy. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)’s Northern Australia Insurance Inquiry Final Report, handed down in 2020 after a three-year investigation, found that average insurance premiums for northerners (not just in Queensland) “are almost double those in the rest of Australia”. Added to this, the excess is “also generally higher”, as residents move to reduce upfront and ongoing premium costs by increasing their insurance excess.

The way insurers price policies has also changed in recent years, a factor which the ACCC found to be impacting prices. Where once insurers would evaluate insurance risk at a postcode level, they were now using “more granular data and sophisticated pricing techniques” to evaluate insurance risk by an individual address.

There is also an increased risk of insurers declining to cover certain properties. The North Queensland Home Insurance initiative website states “in some cases, insurers may choose not to provide insurance if they think that the risk of a significant claim being made is too great”.

So, if you are in the market for home insurance in North Queensland, it could pay to compare features of policies, find a shortlist of insurers, and ask for quotes for your address, so you can weigh up what’s on offer. You can use the table at the top of this page to compare home and contents insurance for north Queensland. You can tailor the search by altering the filters.

It is important to check the product disclosure statement (PDS) of your chosen policy before taking it out, so you can be aware of what is and isn’t covered. You may also like to check the Target Market Determination (TMD) for a product you are considering.

It is important to know that cover for flood damage does not necessarily come standard with home and contents insurance, and it’s therefore important to establish what kind of flood damage you’re covered for, and whether it’s a standard inclusion or an optional extra.

A survey of home and contents insurance policies on Canstar’s database found that, for those with flood cover, damage caused by rainwater runoff tends to be a standard inclusion, but damage for other things such as flash flooding due to heavy rain may not be.

Just under 80% of policies surveyed cover flooding from a natural water course such as a creek or river, or flooding from the release of a dam, as standard, while around 21% require policyholders to take this cover on as an optional extra.

A little over a third of policies surveyed cover flooding damage due to a storm surge, while none of the policies surveyed cover flooding due to a rise in seawater or tidal flooding.

In an area such as North Queensland, which may be prone to flooding, it may prove very helpful to check the details of your policy or contact your insurance provider to find out exactly what you are covered for in this event.

Even after you take out a home and contents insurance policy, it’s important to remember that there are certain exclusions, and things that could see your claim knocked back. In Australia, some of the most common exclusions to be wary of are:

• Leaving your home empty: some insurance providers have a maximum period you can be away from home before your cover is voided, so it’s important to check exactly how long you can be away with your insurance provider.
• Failing to properly secure your home: your claim could be rejected if you don’t take proper precautions to lock doors and windows in your home, or to take measures like closing windows when a storm is coming.
• Visitors staying at your house: typically only people listed on your insurance certificate will be covered. So the belongings of guests and house-sitters will be excluded under a standard contents insurance.
• Existing damage: new policies may not  cover pre-existing damage to your home or its contents.
• Renovations: most home and contents insurance will not cover for damage or loss connected to repairs and renovations, so you may need a specialised policy for this, and alternatively, it is worth checking with your builder about their insurance.

It is important to check the product disclosure statement (PDS) of your chosen policy before taking it out, so you can be aware of what you are and aren’t covered for. You may also like to check the Target Market Determination (TMD) for a product you are considering. If you would like to know more, Canstar has considered some of the most common home and contents insurance exclusions.