There are currently 150 houses on the market in Moranbah, the mining town of only 8600 people, mostly through bank foreclosures.

At a recent auction, a four-bedroom house bought for $850,000 at the peak of the boom was passed in at auction after not reaching the reserve price of $220,000.

Moranbah Real Estate owner Bella Exposito, who has been in the real estate game for 28 years, says the past 12 months has been as bad as it gets. Last year she only sold eight properties for the entire year.

This year it has improved, but only five properties are selling per month.

'Worst downturn price wise'

"This is my 10th downturn, but in a lot of ways this is the worst downturn price wise," Ms Exposito told The Australian Financial Review.

She said 99 per cent of the properties she sold in Moranbah were snapped by investors from across Australia, including Sydney and Melbourne, as well as as far away as Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

"Prices will go back but they will never go back to the levels achieved during the boom when there was a shortage of supply. Now there is too much supply but prices will probably only go to half a million dollars," she said.


"But I haven't seen one investor since the boom. I think they were being unrealistic thinking the boom was going to last forever."

During the peak of the boom, a house in Moranbah achieved a record price of $1.25 million. Now the highest price recorded recently in Moranbah is $320,000.

Isaac Regional Council Mayor and long-term Moranbah resident Anne Baker said the last property boom - created by a perfect storm of high coal prices and a rush of new projects coming on-line - was the largest she had seen in her 30 years living in the Bowen Basin.

"It was an explosion - there was no doubt about that. But at that time all the planets aligned for the coal industry," she said.

At the time, it created a housing affordability crisis. This has run in parallel with the debate over 100 per cent fly-in, fly-out mines in the Bowen Basin where locals say worker camps outside of towns are hastening the demise of many rural communities.

The Palaszczuk Labor government is looking into the issue, but a ban on 100 per cent fly-in-fly-out mines in the future - there are currently only two operating in Queensland, BHP Billiton's Caval Ridge and Daunia mines - seems likely.

Since the coal price plummeted, thousands of mining workers have been let go as resource companies close mines or shelve expansions. Ironically, there have been record coal exports out of Queensland ports as companies ship out as much brown coal as they can to try and make ends meet.

With mega-mines in the Galilee Basin, including Adani's $16.5 billion Carmichael project, still hanging in the balance, some pundits believe the game is up for fossil fuels.


But Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said the long-term prospects for coal, driven by demand from Asian, were good, with demand for high-quality thermal coal expected to double over the next 15 years.

CoreLogic RP Data's head of research Tim Lawless said house prices in key mining areas have been falling faster and further than they increased during the boom - although he believes the prices may have bottomed out.

In the Isaac Regional Council region, which includes mining towns such as Moranbah and Dysart, prices increased by 45 per cent in the two years leading up to the market peak in late 2012. In the two years since the peak prices have fallen by 62 per cent, with most of the fall taking place over the first 12 months.

"The sharp fall in prices after such a substantial surge highlights how far the housing market can turn across a single industry region," Mr Lawless said.

"The trend of price declines in some of the hardest hit mining regions has been levelling off since the beginning of this year, as have listing numbers and rental depreciation. While prices may fall further, the worst of the market correction is likely in the past."

Ms Exposito is not expecting a return of southern investors looking to invest in Queensland mining towns anytime soon.

"I don't think they will come back, especially the ones who got burnt. But investors, it's like the share market, they never learn," she said.