[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd6ZwqLePC0[/youtube] Irish housing bull vs a bear news segment then a debate later ensues recorded in 2007
Can't possibly happen here Australia is different and this time it's different the Chinese buyers will keep the prices going up <damn I wish there was a sarcasm smiley>
It's a little hard to feel sorry for foreign speculators, much easier to feel sorry for the poor families who wanted to buy a home and paid 270% over what their house cost a few years ago. Doubly for those locked in to fixed rate home loans at the "normal" rates of the time, so they are stuck paying piles more than interest than anyone taking out a loan today.
Bubble Checklist Voice of reason quashed - check Strong inward migration - check Foreign investors - check Strong economy - check It's dfferent here - check Low rental yield - check
I think you are comparing apples to pears - you can not compare Australia to Ireland or the UK market. When this bust happens I feel it will be soft.
We may see softness in the prime suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, but the more dismal outlying suburbs, and rural towns, may experience a more extreme downside. Imagine if people lose their jobs or are having extreme trouble servicing their debt in one of those shitty outer suburbs... They'll start asking themselves, is it worth it? Why am I living a pathetic, meaningless life of debt servitude for this sad, low-quality McHouse on this sad little patch of land far from any services in this sad, dismal suburb, surrounded by other sad, dismal, struggling people? Then they'll walk away. They'll try to dump their own little piece of crap on a market flooded with other pathetic bits of crap, a market permeated by the stench of the rotting Australian dream.
Imagine here in Adelaide where we might lose the sub corp sub jobs AND holdens on roughly the same side of town. All good middle class mortgage supporting jobs. Your talking about thousands of households supported by two centers about 10 km away (as the crow flies). Houses are already pretty cheap, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom regular family homes on quater acer blocks with great views all the way out to the ocean (on the hills) less than 30 minutes drive from the middle of the city for under 300k. What they'll be after the closures and possibly during a nationwide downturn to boot you can only guess. I live around there, hopefully it'll be around the time I'm ready to buy a home, at least someone should get something out of all that misery. The people I feel sorriest for are those buying new houses on tiny blocks 20 minutes further out for similar money. Houses surrounded by dry empty paddocks with no amenities around. Those houses will be the worst hit. They'll be a few years old (so not new), much further from town than people in Adelaide are used to and they'll look real expensive if people are trying to get their mortgages back compared to the cheap houses in the real Adelaide suburbs. I certainly wouldn't want to get into expensive investment property at the moment. Particularly if the Chinese investors pull out because of economic issues at home.
Other alarming anecdotes: TV shows about flipping houses Celebrity builders/chippies footballers wives flipping houses largest group of buyers is the speculators not FHB