I gave up trying to predict housing bubbles about 15 years ago.

You see there was exactly the same talk then, & I was talked out of buying a nice little high set home in Beaudesert. All the talk convinced me it would be a losing proposition.

So I didn't buy that house for $31,000, & put the money somewhere else. In that time it has grown to $52,000. Good deal you say, I've done well.

Like hell I have. That nice little house recently sold at auction for $298,000.

If St Peter himself had given me a gold plated guarantee that house price, [I won't say value] could go up so much in 15 years I still wouldn't have believed it.

Still when you think about it, with much government help the price of the land has gone from $10,000 15 years ago, to $60,000, 7 years ago, to $190,000 today. Building that same house has gone from $29,000 to the best part of $200,000, so I guess $298,000 is actually cheap.

I can't see prices coming down much Belly, while building is so expensive. Four bed largish houses on a postage stamp block in the new satellite city near us are selling like hotcakes for $450,000, in house & land deals.

While these costs & prices are putting such a high floor in the market, prices for existing houses won't drop. Perhaps if the younger generation were happy with the style & size of house I grew up with, & owned as my first homes, prices could come back a bit. However while governments, state & local, want to rip $100,000 out of every new block subdivided, prices can't move down very much.

Dear SM,

You of all people have no right to accuse others
of any sort of bias. I shall respond further
when you surprise me and actually say something
intelligent. In the meantime I shall leave you
to continue singing from your party's song sheet.

Dear rehctub,

Thank you for your opinion.

Some of us may benefit from a walk in the worlds news papers.
Some are free to read and if not other sites exist that are.
Goggle England edition could be a start.
Today in another British news paper this subject, in regard to England's housing market is under review.
The fact we do not want a bubble in no way stops one.

I note some are focusing on my post about Shortens purely dumb act, ignoring ,as the polls say over whelming numbers of LABOR VOTERS want the Royal Commission.
He gives us zero choice, in ignoring his rank and file and the public's gutfull of a bent system blasting us constantly, is he aware his actions seem to say *tell the mugs any thing they will follow*.
Can he think we do not know he won not by our votes, but in spite of them!
His power base this morning again! the union right, suffocates the ALP!
Albo mate, please give the lost right the news they are fooling only them selves Shorten if you no longer have it! go now
If you owe so much to your power base the right wing unions that you hurt the Party go with haste and let reforms start.
Joe and Jane average should know Labors right is uninterested in reform, for their power has to go as first step!

As Dennis Pryor points out in his booklet,
"Political Pryorities: How to get on top of
Australian politics." :

"The problem with polls is that they are based on the
principle of asking a representative sample of the
populace for their opinions, for example, on which of
two politicians they would vote for, which they rated
higher in leadership qualities, honesty, capability,
and the like."

"The results from this sample are then taken as
representative of the community as a whole. The more
obvious deficiences of this method are that it depends on how
you ask the questions, on whether the sample is reliable and
whether the people asking the question are honest."

"Above all polling is based on the quaint notion that
people tell the truth, a notion contrary to the life
experience of everyone. Thus polling is a means of giving
mathematical respectability to a collection of anecdotal
evidence."

"Pollsters have no anxiety about the accuracy of their
political results. A classic example - at the 1987
election the final figures on the day before the election
gave Labor a lead varying between 2% and 14%. Faced with
any error in election forecasts pollsters have a repertoire
of excuses: the result was within the range of plus or
minus 2% which we allow for polling errors; the swing was
inconsistent in different electorates; the electors changed
their minds on the day of the poll," and so on.

Belly,

It looks as though Shorten's honeymoon with you has ended even faster than Juliar's. What do you now think of Rudd's amendments to party rules that makes it near impossible to get rid of him?

Foxy,

I was not accusing you of bias (though you clearly are) but rather of being a stranger to the truth.

I know you would like to dismiss the bad news in the latest polls, but polls are not as arbitrary as you would like to make out. The better polls have been very close to the final election results, as shown by your need to go back 27 years to find a poor example. I will however, concede that polls a long way out of an election are more dictated by recent events than serious consideration of voting, however, long term trends are difficult to shake.

The trends throughout Juliar's regime was 54/46 to the coalition, even though the polls moved from 50/50 to 58/42, at election day the final result was nearly 54/46. This session of parliament has just started, so elections in 2016 are too early to call.

Dear SM,

We're all biased to a certain degree - however
some of us are capable of having an open mind on
political issues - others are not. And therein
lies the diference between certain people.
And as I've pointed out in the past - voter
support is ever fragile and re-election is
never a foregone conclusion. It shall be
interesting indeed to see what happens next in
the political arena.