Key Takeaways
- No published report could be found showing that Brisbane roofers saw a 25% increase in storm damage calls. Until someone names the study, its sample and its comparison period, treat the figure as a claim rather than a finding.
- The demand behind the headline is real. The Insurance Council of Australia recorded 41,378 claims and $1.07 billion in insured losses from South East Queensland’s storms of 26 October to 2 November 2025, then 95,692 claims and $2.2 billion from the Queensland and New South Wales storms later that November.
- The strongest evidence concerns capacity, not call counts. The Insurance Council says demand for roofers, glaziers and tarping crews ran “well above capacity” at the peak of that recovery.
- Storm work arrives late as well as all at once. More than half of the claims from the November 2025 event were counted after its first eight days, and the Insurance Council warns that roof damage can surface months later.
- Roofers should track calls by cause and suburb through to won jobs. Homeowners should document damage, call their insurer, check the QBCC license and keep deposits within Queensland’s limits.
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The headline says a new report shows Brisbane roofers fielding 25% more storm damage calls. It’s a tidy number, and it fits what anyone in South East Queensland would expect after the past two storm seasons. It also arrives without an author, a sample size or a statement of what the increase is measured against. Searches of news coverage, Insurance Council of Australia material and Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) pages turned up no source for it.
That doesn’t make the claim false. Roofing call volumes are private business data, so an increase of that size could easily have happened at plenty of firms without anyone publishing it. It only means the number can’t be checked, and a figure that can’t be checked shouldn’t drive a hiring decision or a marketing budget.
Better evidence does exist, and it’s more useful than the headline. This article uses the Insurance Council’s 2025–26 catastrophe report, State Emergency Service (SES) figures from October 2026 and current Brisbane price guides to show what storm demand looks like, why a single percentage can’t describe it, and what roofers and homeowners should do before the next cell rolls through.
What the Published Data Actually Shows
No public dataset counts calls to Brisbane roofers. The closest available measures are insurance claims and SES requests. Both are useful, but each one measures something different, and neither can be converted into a roofer’s phone log.
| Measure | Figure | Source and date | What it can’t tell you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Severe spring storms (SE 254), South East Queensland, 26 October to 2 November 2025 | 41,378 claims, $1.07 billion insured losses | Insurance Council, as at 30 July 2026 | Includes motor and commercial claims, and isn’t limited to Brisbane |
| Queensland and NSW severe storms and hail (Cat 255), 20 to 27 November 2025 | 95,692 claims, $2.2 billion insured losses | Insurance Council 2025–26 report | Covers two states, and no Brisbane-only total is given |
| All declared events, national | About $2.2 billion in 2024–25, then $3.98 billion in 2025–26 | Insurance Council 2025–26 report | Covers all perils, including bushfire and flood |
| SES call-outs, 22 October 2026 | 277 statewide from 6am to 2pm, and 72 calls for assistance reported in Brisbane that evening | SES and SES Brisbane local controller Nadine Ramsey, via ABC News | Different time windows, so the two figures can’t be added or directly compared |
Those numbers point in one direction: storm work in South East Queensland has been heavy. On the national figures, insured losses from declared events rose about 79% from 2024–25 to 2025–26. That’s more than three times the headline’s percentage, yet it says nothing direct about Brisbane roofing calls, because it counts dollars across every peril in the country.
Why insurance claims aren’t roofing calls
Hail hits cars as well as roofs. RACQ Insurance’s early count from the November 2025 storms was 3,603 claims, made up of 2,006 motor and 1,597 home, so homes were about 44% of that insurer’s initial tally. The Insurance Council’s final cost split looks quite different: building damage accounted for 84% of the cost of personal claims in Cat 255 and motor for 14%. One figure is an early count from a single insurer and the other is a final dollar share across the industry, so they can’t be reconciled. Together they show how far a “claims” number can sit from a “roofs” number.
Why the next storm won’t look like the last one
Storm demand is intensely local. Of the 277 SES call-outs reported across Queensland to 2pm on 22 October 2026, 152 were in Moreton Bay, which is about 55%. Caboolture recorded about 203mm in six hours that day. Ramsey said leaking roofs were the most common issue the SES was handling in Brisbane. A roofer based near the worst of that rain and one on the far side of the city could have had completely different weeks, and a citywide average would describe neither of them.
Why 25% Is a Hard Number to Interpret
A percentage increase depends entirely on its starting point. For a storm-driven trade, that choice can do more to shape the result than the weather itself. Late 2025 was so severe that it distorts many of the obvious comparisons.
| Comparison a report might use | What it would actually measure | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| October or November 2026 vs the same month in 2025 | Change against an exceptionally damaging period | A busy 2026 could still show a decline, and a 25% rise on that base would be remarkable |
| A storm week vs the week before | The size of a single spike | Tells you about one event and little about the year |
| 2025–26 season vs 2024–25 season | Change between two heavy seasons | Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, in March 2025, sits inside the baseline |
| Current season vs a five-year average | Change against a more normal run of years | The fairest test, but few small firms keep clean records that far back |
What a credible report would need to show
A real study would name its participants and say how many roofing businesses it covered. It would define a storm damage call, because a leak from a failed flashing and a leak from a hail strike can sound the same on the phone. It would state the comparison period. It would also count each homeowner once, since one household ringing three roofers shows up as three calls across the industry but represents only one job.
Calls are the wrong finish line anyway
Take an illustrative roofer whose storm calls rise from 40 to 50 in a month. That’s the 25%. If the crew can only inspect 30 roofs in that time, the extra calls don’t add a single job. They add a longer callback list and more frustrated homeowners who ring someone else. Revenue can mislead in the other direction. The cost guide What’s The Damage says Brisbane roofing prices rose about 5.2% over the past year, so some revenue growth may just be price growth rather than extra work.
The Real Constraint: Capacity
The most useful finding in the Insurance Council’s report isn’t a claim count. It’s this description of the recovery from the November 2025 storms: “Building trades were similarly stretched, with demand for roofers, glaziers and tarping crews well above capacity in the peak recovery period.” The report adds that some policyholders with hail-damaged roofs faced repair delays because continued wet weather limited safe access and slowed permanent repairs.
The labor shortage underneath that is broader than any one storm. The report cites Master Builders Australia’s estimate that the industry needs another 116,000 housing construction workers and has around 20,000 unfilled vacancies. It also says Queensland accounted for 60% of claims from declared events between 2022 and 2026. Of the 22 federal electorates with more than 5,000 claims, 19 were in Queensland, mostly in the Gold Coast, Redlands, Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay and Brisbane areas.
The tail matters as much as the spike
Roofers tend to remember the phones ringing the morning after a storm. The claim counts show a longer story. More than 44,600 claims were reported in the first eight days of Cat 255, and the total reached 95,692. That means roughly 53% of the eventual claims were counted after those eight days. The Insurance Council describes storms as having a “long claims tail,” with roof and building damage “not always immediately apparent, meaning claims can emerge months later as inspections and repairs progress.”
For a roofing business, that means a storm month and the months after it need different plans. The first days call for triage and make-safes. The following months bring slower-burning jobs, such as a stain that appears weeks later or a cracked tile found during an inspection for something else. A firm that only markets during the spike can miss much of that second wave.
Costs have moved too
The report’s figures from Cotality’s Cordell Construction Cost Index show why storm repairs feel more expensive. From March 2021 to March 2026, roof tile costs rose 77% and roofer labor costs rose 50.4%, against CPI growth of about 24%. The modeled cost of rebuilding a standard Brisbane home rose from $344,000 in June 2021 to $498,000 in June 2026, an increase of about 45%. Those are national and whole-house measures rather than a price for your repair, but they help explain why an older budget or memory of a past job is a poor guide to a quote today.
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Three Routes Into a Storm Job, Compared
A storm call can turn into very different work depending on who controls the job. Each route has its own decision-maker and its own risk, so a roofer who lumps them together will struggle to read the numbers.
| Emergency make-safe | Insurer-allocated repair | Homeowner-direct repair | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who usually chooses the roofer | The homeowner or the insurer’s builder, often at short notice | The insurer or its builder network | The homeowner, often after comparing quotes |
| Who decides the scope | Stopping water entry and making the site safe | The insurer’s approved scope | The homeowner and the roofer |
| Main risk for the homeowner | Paying for work that goes beyond making safe | Delays when trades are stretched | Signing before the insurer has approved anything |
| Main risk for the roofer | Crews tied up with little follow-on work | Depends on the insurer’s process and timing | Quoting jobs that a claim later sends elsewhere |
| How it wins the work | Answering quickly and being easy to find | Relationships with insurers and their builders | Reputation, reviews and visibility in search |
The QBCC’s disaster recovery guidance tells contractors interested in working in an affected area to contact the major insurance companies, and it notes that much of this work is allocated by insurers. So a surge in calls may overstate the work a roofer can actually win directly. IAG, for example, reported more than 800 make-safe repairs carried out by its partner builders within days of the November 2025 storms. Claims-heavy firms also have a paperwork problem to solve, which RankBurn’s comparison of CRM options for roofers in Australia covers from the point of view of insurance pipelines.
What Storm Repairs Cost in Brisbane Right Now
The table below combines two commercial guides. What’s The Damage says its Brisbane prices were verified in October 2026 against more than 90 trade pricing sources and include GST. The Quote Yard’s Queensland page was published on 9 September 2026 and describes its figures as estimates based on typical market rates. Both are lead-generation or comparison businesses, not auditors, so these are useful for sense-checking a quote and nothing more.
| Job | Range | Typical | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency tarping and make-safe | $400 to $1,200 | Not stated | The Quote Yard (Queensland) |
| Storm damage inspection and written report | $300 to $900 | Not stated | The Quote Yard (Queensland) |
| Minor leak repair | $250 to $800 | $500 | What’s The Damage (Brisbane) |
| Tile replacement repair | $300 to $1,000 | $600 | What’s The Damage (Brisbane) |
| Partial ridge capping repair | $400 to $1,200 | $600 | What’s The Damage (Brisbane) |
| Full ridge re-bed and re-point | $800 to $3,500 | $2,200 | What’s The Damage (Brisbane) |
| Ceiling and water damage repairs | $900 to $6,500 | Not stated | The Quote Yard (Queensland) |
| Full roof replacement, single-storey | $14,000 to $30,000 | $22,000 | What’s The Damage (Brisbane) |
The Quote Yard adds a warning worth taking seriously: “Storm pricing moves with demand.” It also puts full replacement after severe damage at $9,000 to $30,000 or more, so its low end sits well below What’s The Damage’s. Treat the difference as a reason to get real quotes rather than proof that one guide is right. The insurance averages are no substitute either. The $23,252 average claim for Cat 255 includes vehicles, contents and commercial property, so it isn’t the price of a roof repair.
What Homeowners Should Know Before Signing Anything
Stretched capacity creates an opening for operators who aren’t local and may not stick around. After the Brisbane hailstorm of 26 October 2025, the Insurance Council warned that “disaster chasers” may pressure homeowners to sign repair contracts on the spot with a promise that the insurer will pay. Its advice was blunt: “insurers will only pay for approved work that is covered by a policy.” A homeowner who signs first can be left owing commission or an inflated bill the policy won’t cover.
Licensing and deposits in Queensland
The QBCC says a license is required for building work valued over $3,300, and its free online license check will confirm a contractor’s status. Its deposit limits are set out below, with the dollar examples calculated for this article.
| Contract price | Maximum deposit listed by QBCC | Example |
|---|---|---|
| $3,300 or less | 20% | $600 on a $3,000 repair |
| $3,301 to $19,999 (level 1 contract) | 10% | $800 on an $8,000 repair |
| About $20,000 and up (level 2 contract) | 5% | $1,100 on a $22,000 replacement |
The QBCC warns that if you pay more than the lawful deposit, you won’t be able to recover the excess, including through a Queensland Home Warranty Scheme claim. Its licensee guide also says contracts of $3,300 or less aren’t regulated by domestic building legislation, so treat the 20% figure as a ceiling to insist on rather than a guaranteed protection. Rules can change, so confirm current limits with the QBCC before paying.
Emergency help and make-safes
Brisbane City Council says the SES can provide temporary, emergency storm damage repairs to habitable areas of private homes. Requests go through 132 500 or the SES online form, and life-threatening emergencies go to Triple Zero (000). Anyone who has a private make-safe done should photograph the damage first, keep the invoice and tell the insurer as soon as possible. The Quote Yard says insurers usually reimburse reasonable make-safe costs but push back on work beyond that, so ask your own insurer where the line sits under your policy. On older roofs, have suspect materials identified first, since the QBCC notes that removing more than 10 square meters of asbestos requires a license.
Which Response Is Right for You?
The right move depends on which side of the phone you’re on.
If you run a roofing business
- Can you state your own storm call numbers by month for the past three years? If not, an industry percentage won’t help you, and your first job is to start recording them.
- What happens to a call at 7pm on a storm night? If it goes to voicemail, more calls may simply mean more lost work.
- How much of your storm work comes through insurers? If it’s most of it, your growth depends on those relationships more than on ads or search.
- How many inspections can each crew really do in a week of wet weather? Plan marketing and hiring around that number, not the best week of the year.
- Are you contacting past storm customers in the months after an event? Late-appearing damage is work a firm can earn without competing in the first-day rush.
- Could a homeowner find your license number and suburbs served within seconds? With disaster chaser warnings circulating, that information helps you stand apart.
If your roof has been damaged
- Is water coming in now? Photograph it if it’s safe, then arrange a make-safe through the SES, your insurer or a licensed roofer.
- Have you lodged a claim? The Insurance Council urges people to lodge even if they don’t yet know the full extent of the damage.
- Did the roofer come to you uninvited? Check the license and call your insurer before agreeing to anything.
- Could damage be hidden? If you were in a hail path, consider an inspection even with no leak, since damage can take months to appear.
How to Get Started Before the Next Storm
The steps below are aimed at roofing businesses, since homeowners’ first steps are covered above. None of them requires an expensive system, and a shared spreadsheet is enough to begin.
- Log every inbound enquiry. Record the date, suburb, stated cause, route (insurer or direct) and outcome. After one season, you’ll have better data than the headline offers.
- Mark storm dates against that log. Compare the same weeks across years and add the dates of declared events, so a spike can be matched to its cause.
- Measure the whole funnel. Track calls answered, inspections booked, quotes sent and jobs won. A falling answer rate during a surge tells you far more than a rising call count.
- Write a surge plan now. Decide who answers after hours, how jobs are triaged, what tarping stock you hold and what you’ll say when the wait is two weeks. Honest wait times keep more customers than silence does.
- Publish the pages homeowners search for. Cover storm damage, make-safes, hail inspections and insurance paperwork by suburb, and include your license details. These need to be live before the storm hits, because a page written during one will be too late to help.
- Schedule the follow-up. Contact past customers and nearby enquiries in the months after an event, and tell them what late-appearing damage looks like. Keep it factual, and avoid the pressure tactics regulators warn homeowners about.
Roofers deciding how much to spend on that visibility can use RankBurn’s breakdown of RankBurn pricing for roofing contractor marketing, which covers how storm and insurance work affects a quote and how many jobs it takes to pay it back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a real report showing Brisbane roofers saw a 25% increase in storm damage calls?
No source for the figure could be found. Searches of news coverage, Insurance Council of Australia material and QBCC pages didn’t surface a study that measured calls to Brisbane roofers. The increase may be true for some businesses, but treat the 25% as unverified until a study is named.
How big were South East Queensland’s recent storm events?
The Insurance Council recorded 41,378 claims and $1.07 billion in insured losses from the storms of 26 October to 2 November 2025. The Queensland and New South Wales event of 20 to 27 November 2025 produced 95,692 claims and $2.2 billion. Both totals include vehicles, and the second covers two states.
Is it hard to get a roofer in Brisbane after a storm?
It can be. The Insurance Council reported that demand for roofers, glaziers and tarping crews was well above capacity at the peak of the November 2025 recovery, and that wet weather delayed some permanent roof repairs. Getting a temporary make-safe in place early protects the home while you wait.
How much does storm damage roof repair cost in Brisbane?
Commercial guides from 2026 list emergency tarping and make-safe at $400 to $1,200, minor leak repairs at $250 to $800, and tile replacement repairs at $300 to $1,000. A full single-storey replacement is listed at $14,000 to $30,000. These are estimates, so itemized quotes on your own roof should carry more weight.
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How can I spot a disaster chaser after a Brisbane storm?
Warning signs include pressure to sign on the spot, a promise that your insurer will pay, and a request for money up front. Check the contractor’s QBCC license, make sure you know exactly who you’re contracting with, and speak with your insurer before agreeing to any work.
Will the 2026–27 season bring fewer storms to Brisbane?
Nobody can say with confidence. ABC News reported that modeling points to a quiet cyclone season nationally, with near-normal activity near the Queensland coast, but that forecast covers cyclones rather than hailstorms, and no Bureau of Meteorology thunderstorm outlook for the season could be found. Separately, the Insurance Council expects severe storms and hail to become more damaging over time.
The 25% headline can’t be verified, and it wouldn’t settle much even if it could. Published data already shows that recent storms pushed Brisbane-area roofing demand beyond what the trade could handle, that the work kept arriving long after the first week, and that repairs now cost more. Roofers who count their own calls through to won jobs will know more than any report can tell them, and homeowners who document damage, call their insurer and check a license will be far harder to take advantage of, whatever next season brings.
About RankBurn
RankBurn builds local visibility for Australian home services businesses, including roofers, plumbers, electricians and landscapers, through done-for-you content publishing and distribution. Its articles are written to be checked: where a reliable figure exists, the source is named, and where one doesn’t, the article says so rather than filling the gap.