[jbarham]

> Even moving to the suburbs isn't an option anymore.

Sure it is. Just rent instead of buying. I pay less to rent a 3 bedroom house in Melbourne's inner suburbs than I did for a 3 bedroom unit in Irvine, CA. Granted buying a house in Australia is very expensive, but Aussies will learn soon enough the folly of not heeding the lessons of the property bubbles in the US, Ireland, Spain etc...

[crdb]

Oh, on that I agree, but it's hard to fight with an ingrained culture of ownership ("rent is dead money!") and cheap credit, and the income/price ratios have been consistent at least since the 80s according to people who bought back then (just like house prices in the US kept going up from WWII to 2007). Australian real estate, unlike much of the US, is also very desirable to a lot of foreigners, and all the government needs to do is lift restrictions on foreign ownership to keep the market afloat a few more years. Look at how central London prices have shot up with the influx of money from as far as Moscow or Qatar...