[Aliantha]

Interesting.

In the part of the country I live in, we're in the middle of a housing crisis for the simple fact that there really are not enough houses to go around, even though the construction industry has been booming over the last decade. It's really become somewhat of a self fullfilling prophesy in that when it started, people started moving here for work, and needed houses which had to be built, so more people came...more houses required...more labour etc etc. The problem is, now that the boom is at it's peak, the value of properties is incredibly high. In the last 18 months since we bought our home, the value has increased not 5% which would be good, and not 10% either. It has increased by nearly 50%! This of course is good for us in so far as being able to 'get extra credit' if we wanted it - along with now having a valuable asset, but it would be foolish to do so because it's going to end because of all the other people who 'get extra credit' because they can. The bubble is going to burst and there's going to be a lot of people living in houses they can't afford. On top of that, rents are over inflated simply because prospective tennants are offering to pay more for places than they're worth (in comparison to other states and historical prices) which of course leaves out the lower income earners who're then suckered into a 100% mortgage (they'll even be loaned more than 100% sometimes) which there's no way they'll pay off before the prices are deflated in say 10yrs time (maybe less).

The only benefit we have in Australia is the amount of natural resources we can pillage from our land. The mining industry (always a good source of cash for unskilled labour and tradesmen) is of course booming also which in turn gives people more cash than they'd otherwise have had. We as a separate economy here can probably support ourselves through a large market slump because of this boom in mining, but it wont sustain us forever and eventually things will topple here also.