ExecutiveSlaveBox

+1 Couldn't have put it better myself, shame such a potentially great country is spoiled by tedious wannabe lord of the manor types. As an aside there was a fairly interesting program on the other night about population growth in OZ. Rudd was on and the bloke from Merriton both saying how great it would be having another 20 or 25 million Australians. Wonder how attractive Australia will be as a migration destination when it's cities resemble down town Shanghai and beach's look like Benidorm. Quality of life my ****, it's there grandkids future these twats are selling out.

Watch out for those living costs. As a permie I've never earned as much as right now in OZ taking into account the exchange. Much of that is being eaten up with the insane rental costs in Sydney. Should get better when we move to a more sensible area though

No, rather than that. Infrastructure would be a good start for improvement, perhaps with the much derided maglev. Rather than everyone crowding into the south east for the few jobs that there are, they could spread out a bit. Followed by investment in growth area for the next few centuries, such as renewables, nano-tchnology etc... Combined with venture capital from governments with strict covenants about where they can set up and employ. Long term I'd wean areas off benefits as the brutal reality is we are just paying to breed generations of unemployable people.

Hilarious stuff. Sweeping unemployment hit the north in the 80s, and guess what? it never left. Just millions and millions of folks on permanent incapacity benefit. Few call centers were built up here under the party rouge in the 90s - 00s and people think it's all cool. Just business as usual I'm afraid and always will be until the deep structural issues of the UK economy are addressed.

And on queue Bardon's fluffer, spooky how you two guy's are never logged in at the same time. I'm fully cognizant of the fact Bardon lives in Australia thank you very much. I just thought a guy with his obvious talents is wasted in some chickenshit property deals in OZ and really had a shot at the big time back in blightly, scamming with the creme de la creme.

Greedy - check Smug - check Arrogant - check Zero empathy for your fellow man - check Bardon, have you ever considered a career as a Tory MP, you are the second coming of Alan B'stard.

The root cause of this issue is over population over and above what Australia can support, not droughts, which have regularly occurred throughout Australia's history. There are several reasons why the aboriginals never developed an agrarian society, a good source would be Jared Diamond's, Guns Germs and Steel. However the major one would be the weather cycles which over arch the yearly ones such El Nino/ La Nina etc... Much of Australia over the long term simply does not support farming. Another good example of what I'm on about would be the dust bowl of the 30s in the US. When the first settlers arrived, everything looked great, they planted and had good harvests. What they didn't realise was they were in the 20 year good cycle, when the bad years came they lasted for longer than conventional farmers could cope with. Back on topic, the maximum population Australia could support is pretty close to 20 million, a quick google will bring up numerous reports to that effect: My link Having to build desalination plants in Australia is a major red light that the country is full and importing 100s of thousands of immigrants needs to stop. A quick look round any mall in oz will tell you the other side of this is over breeding, with 3-4 kids seemingly the norm. The baby bonus in this respect is particularly irresponsible.

Don't you understand, it's different in Australia. Bardon should be able to fill you in on the details. No bubble here, nothing to see, move along.

That's the spirit, a fair go for all replaced by ****** you I'm alright. Australia has a bright future with such attitudes.

What coherent arguments are you lot bringing to the table ? "Estate agents say Australian property will go to the moon" "I went to a seminar and they told me Martians are queuing up to buy Ozzie property" I could quote a few centuries of economic case studies to you, try and explain the why's and wherefores of bubble theory, but what's the facking point. BTW - I find the closeness of you and AussieBoy posting rather suspicious. Don't tell me Bardon = AussieBoy ?

Yes, that's because I was taking the piss. I find this thread, you, Bardon and the copy and paste infomercials from various assorted estate agents hilarious. I especially like the fact you both genuinely seem to think Australian housing represents good value and it's not in a bubble. Your ******ed.

It was inside track wasn't it? I can just picture you and barders up the front salivating when they bring the pyramid chart out.

Keep the $5 for the drug of your choice. The demand is pure government stimulus, when it's gone so will any demand for Aussie commodities.

Slightly more significant indicator of how everything's going to go than jobs figures on fantasy island. Or don't you buy the US -> China -> Aus connection ?

And back in the real world.... America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters. Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism. The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy –– just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens. Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Judges are finding ways to block evictions. One magistrate in Minnesota halted a case calling the creditor "harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive". We are not far from a de facto moratorium in some areas. This is how it ended between 1932 and 1934, when half the US states declared moratoria or "Farm Holidays". Such flexibility innoculated America's democracy against the appeal of Red Unions and Coughlin Fascists. The home siezures are occurring despite frantic efforts by the Obama administration to delay the process. This policy is entirely justified given the scale of the social crisis. But it also masks the continued rot in the housing market, allows lenders to hide losses, and stores up an ever larger overhang of unsold properties. It takes heroic naivety to think the US housing market has turned the corner (apologies to Goldman Sachs, as always). The fuse has yet to detonate on the next mortgage bomb, $134bn (£83bn) of "option ARM" contracts due to reset violently upwards this year and next. US house prices have eked out five months of gains on the Case-Shiller index, but momentum stalled in October in half the cities even before the latest surge of 40 basis points in mortgage rates. Karl Case (of the index) says prices may sink another 15pc. "If the 2008 and 2009 loans go bad, then we're back where we were before – in a nightmare." David Rosenberg from Gluskin Sheff said it is remarkable how little traction has been achieved by zero rates and the greatest fiscal blitz of all time. The US economy grew at a 2.2pc rate in the third quarter (entirely due to Obama stimulus). This compares to an average of 7.3pc in the first quarter of every recovery since the Second World War. Fed hawks are playing with fire by talking up about exit strategies, not for the first time. This is what they did in June 2008. We know what happened three months later. For the record, manufacturing capacity use at 67.2pc, and "auto-buying intentions" are the lowest ever. The Fed's own Monetary Multiplier crashed to an all-time low of 0.809 in mid-December. Commercial paper has shrunk by $280bn ($175bn) in since October. Bank credit has been racing down a hair-raising black run since June. It has dropped from $10.844 trillion to $9.013 trillion since November 25. The MZM money supply is contracting at a 3pc annual rate. Broad M3 money is contracting at over 5pc. Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said the Fed is baking deflation into the pie later this year, and perhaps a double-dip recession. Europe is even worse. This has not stopped an army of commentators is trying to bounce the Fed into early rate rises. They accuse Ben Bernanke of repeating the error of 2004 when the Fed waited too long. Sometimes you just want to scream. In 2004 there was no housing collapse, unemployment was 5.5pc, banks were in rude good health, and the Fed Multiplier was 1.73. How anybody can see imminent inflation in the dying embers of core PCE, just 0.1pc in November, is beyond me. Mr Rosenberg is asked by clients why Wall Street does not seem to agree with his grim analysis. His answer is that this is the same Mr Market that bought stocks in October 1987 when they were 25pc overvalued on Shiller "10-year normalized earnings basis" – exactly as they are today – and bought them at even more overvalued prices in 2007, long after the property crash had begun, Bear Stearns funds had imploded, and credit had its August heart attack. The stock market has become a lagging indicator. Tear up the textbooks. telegraph Any thoughts how this is effecting China and subsequently fantasy island?

Yes, unless I'm living in some sort of parallel wealth through debt investment property insane Australia than you are.

On the contrary, I think you'll find investors are creating an artificial shortage of properties for those who badly need it. To get those who have been priced out of the market to subsidise this scam via taxes like negative gearing is taking the absolute piss. This bares no comparison to the 80s, every other person you speak to has an investment property on an IO that they've got negatively geared. There will be carnage if the tax was withdrawn, literally people chucking themselves off tall buildings.

LMAO I think most poor old renters will say bring it on. Are you seriously asking us to believe investors are providing some kind of social service by protecting renters from ruthless market forces? I think you'll find the government is protecting you from exactly that. If this happened thousands of speculators would go to the wall followed by a rapid and long over due correction in the market. No doubt followed by priced out FTBs at last putting a roof over their families head.

Bardon, your living in a bubble like most other ozzies, in a land of tulips and property pyramid schemes. The never ending conveyor belt of greater fools will come to an end one day and thousands of property speculators like yourself will be burnt to the ground.

You eloquently summarised our situation. We have good jobs, plenty of cash and potentially many working years ahead of us paying into the Australian tax system. The best we could afford in Sydney is the shack with the hillbilly neighbours. If we go home we could buy a place outright with good schools for our kids and all in a safe middle class area. Unless sanity steps into the Sydney market, and quick, we are off. I suspect we won't be the only ones.

The unabated madness of pyramid selling continues. They've pulled the plug on the first time sellers grant and interest rates are going up which should put the brakes on a bit. When China's finally spunked away all it's cash things should start getting quite interesting down here.

Further confirmation as if it were needed that Australian property isn't the smartest investment bet out there right now. If it looks like a bubble then it probably is a bubble and no amount of "it's different here" nonsense is going to change that.

So you think there's some legs in this Ozzie housing boom? Room for a few more million for a townhouse? I'm actually starting to feel a little sorry for you dude, your sounding more and more like the Wilsons every day.

We have a choice of a mortgage free property in a nice area back in the UK or a 40-50% mortgage on the same in Sydney. Much as we love Australia and how utterly depressing living in the UK is right now we are considering moving back for that exact reason.