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Kooky
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About Kooky and Shaka →Logan City Council voted on Tuesday 6 October to press ahead with a major redrawing of its flood maps. According to the Council's flood mapping page, councillors endorsed recommendations to progress changes to flood mapping and planning policy, and a Temporary Local Planning Instrument will now go to the Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning for approval. If it is approved, the Council expects the number of properties in its flood overlay to fall by 56.8 per cent, with the new maps taking effect in early 2027.
For anyone buying in Logan, a city of fast-growing suburbs between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the decision matters in a specific way. It changes which properties carry a flood notation in the planning scheme and in the Council's property flood reports. It does not change where water goes when it rains, and it does not take effect yet.
Logan City Council flood mapping page, describing the Council decisions of 4 June and 6 October 2026.
What the Council endorsed
The substance of the change was settled at a special meeting on 4 June 2026, when the Council endorsed a set of improvements to its flood mapping. It describes them as informed by independent technical advice, community feedback, State Government guidance and its own consideration of flood risk management, planning policy and community expectations.
The central decision is to remove from the Flood Overlay Map every flood event less likely than a 1 per cent annual chance. That includes the most extreme scenario of all, known as the Probable Maximum Flood. The Council says the removal will make a real difference for more than 25,000 properties across the city while still maintaining appropriate development controls and community safety in the floodplain.
Related readBuilding regulator maps Queensland's defect hotspots, region by regionThe 6 October vote moved the plan from decision to mechanism. The instrument chosen, a Temporary Local Planning Instrument, is described by the Council as a process available under Queensland's planning framework that allows interim planning responses to be introduced before a formal planning scheme amendment can be completed. In other words, it is the quick route, used so that the new maps do not have to wait for a full rewrite of the scheme.
- Council endorsementChanges agreed on 4 June 2026. Recommendations to progress them endorsed on 6 October 2026.
- State approvalThe temporary planning instrument goes to the Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning.
- New maps applyExpected in early 2027 if approved. The overlay then covers the 1% annual chance flood only.
What the Probable Maximum Flood is
Flood maps are built on probabilities. The standard yardstick in Queensland planning is the flood with a 1 per cent chance of happening in any year, often called the one-in-100-year flood. Logan's mapping page says its overlay will be limited to the extent of that event.
Beyond it lie rarer and larger floods. The Probable Maximum Flood is the far end of that scale: the largest flood that could conceivably occur in a catchment, an event so rare that it has no meaningful annual percentage. Mapping it draws a line around the outer limit of the floodplain, well beyond anything in the historical record.
That information has a purpose. Emergency planners need to know which roads could be cut and which neighbourhoods isolated in the worst case. The Council says information about rarer events, up to a 0.05 per cent annual chance, will remain available for emergency planning. What changes is that these scenarios will no longer appear in the planning scheme, in the maps of the Logan Flood Portal or in Property Flood Reports.
Related readQueensland buyers are gloomier than those in states where prices fallHow Logan got here
The redrawing is a reversal of sorts. Trade publication Insurance Business reported on 29 October 2025 that Logan had updated its flood risk mapping to include a one-in-2,000 annual chance flood and Probable Maximum Flood scenarios, in line with State Planning Policy requirements. Properties that had never been flagged found themselves inside a mapped flood area.
The reaction was strong. That report described a retired couple in the city who had been quoted $10,500 a year for home insurance and whose property was classed as high risk despite 33 years without a flood threat. Similar concerns were emerging in Ipswich over overland flow mapping, it noted.
The Council's page records that more than 4,000 submissions were received in public consultation. It also records a smaller change made along the way: a map in the Flood Portal that had been labelled "insurance" was renamed "current climate", to make clear that it was not produced for commercial use.
A further review is still running. The Council says it is examining the assumptions and methods behind its creek flood mapping, including how to distinguish overland flow from creek flooding, and that no decisions have been made on that work. Properties could be kept, added or removed as a result.
What changes for a buyer, and when
Nothing changes today. Until the Minister approves the instrument and it takes effect, the current overlay remains the legal position. A temporary instrument made in 2024 already regulates flood risk in the areas covered by the overlay, according to the Council's page.
The existing flood overlay still applies to a contract signed this spring
The new maps need State approval and are expected in early 2027. A property flood report ordered today shows the current mapping, including scenarios that are due to be removed.
Once the change is in force, three things will be different for someone researching a Logan property.
Related readQueenslanders' house price expectations drop 15 per cent in a monthThe planning scheme overlay will be smaller. An overlay is what triggers flood-related requirements when an owner builds or extends, such as minimum floor heights. A property outside the overlay is not subject to those controls.
The Flood Portal maps will show fewer scenarios. The Council says the Probable Maximum Flood will be removed from them.
Property Flood Reports will be simpler. A new standard report will become the default, with more detailed versions kept for emergency planning and for industry professionals.
A buyer who relies on the simpler report should understand what it is designed to show. It answers the planning question, whether the 1 per cent annual chance flood reaches the lot. It will no longer show how the property fares in a rarer event.
Maps and insurance premiums are separate
Much of the pressure for change came from insurance costs, and the Council is careful about what it promises on that front. Its page states that the Council does not set insurance premiums or determine how insurers price risk. Residents worried about a premium are advised to ask their insurer what flood data was used.
The insurance industry has made the same point from the other side. In the Insurance Business report of October 2025, a spokesperson for the Insurance Council of Australia said each insurer uses its own datasets and risk assessment capabilities beyond local council flood maps, and that most calculate premiums at the level of the individual address.
So a property that leaves the overlay in 2027 may or may not become cheaper to insure. The planning map and the insurer's model are built for different purposes, and a change in one does not require a change in the other. For a buyer, the reliable test remains the same before and after the redrawing: obtain an insurance quote for the specific address, with flood cover included, before the contract becomes unconditional.
Related readInterstate arrivals to Queensland slow to 14,718 in the year to MarchWhat a seller does not have to tell you
Queensland's seller disclosure scheme, in force since 1 August 2025, requires a seller to give the buyer a disclosure statement before the contract is signed. The Queensland Government's summary of the scheme lists what the statement covers, including title details, zoning and certain notices. It also lists what a seller need not disclose, and historical flooding is on that second list, together with the structural condition of buildings.
The flood check is therefore the buyer's job in Logan, as it is everywhere in the state. The State's own FloodCheck mapping tool carries a warning that it should not be used to determine the potential for flooding at the property level, and directs users to the relevant local government for that information. In Logan that means the Flood Portal and the Property Flood Report.
A different direction from Brisbane
Logan's decision runs against the recent trend in the region. Brisbane City Council's 2025 update of its creek flood mapping, reported by Inside Local Government in August of that year, changed the flood classification of 17,246 properties, adding 10,129 to mapped flood areas and removing 400. That update followed new flood studies for three creek catchments and was written into Brisbane City Plan on 19 September 2025.
The two councils are answering different questions. Brisbane revised its maps because new studies changed the estimate of where a given flood would reach. Logan is keeping its studies and changing which of their scenarios appear on the regulatory map. The first is a change in the science, the second a change in policy about how much of the science belongs in a planning overlay.
For buyers comparing homes across the two cities, the consequence is that a "flood-mapped" property does not mean the same thing on both sides of the boundary. Brisbane's awareness mapping extends to floods with a 0.05 per cent annual chance. From early 2027, if the Minister agrees, Logan's overlay will stop at 1 per cent.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
