Burst the housing bubble

What is going on in Sydney Australia? They are an Olympic city (Summer too, not the puny Winter Games), they're on the water, they have lots of immigration, a jewel of a city. Sounds like Vancouver.

But their housing bubble exploded all over the place. Now, combined with crazy levels of personal debt, they have a new category of 'pay-later poor'.

This is just ridiculous. Look at this cover of 24 Hours. The header says 'Bubble trouble?' but there is no article about the housing market or the bubble, just a generic photo of construction and the line 'Is the housing bubble about to burst? Experts say that while meteoric price hikes have subsided, the housing market is in no threat of crashing anytime soon.'

Miraculously enough, we bought a duplex in Vancouver back when housing prices were merely high (as opposed to their present level, which is absurd). But that doesn't mean we have a stake in keeping housing prices high; if anything, our interest lies in seeing the bubble burst, too.

But wait, you think: don't all us home owners have a stake in keeping prices high? Only if we're planning to get out of the market all together. Speaking personally, when we sell our house it will be so that we can buy another house in Vancouver, so it doesn't matter to us whether we're buying and selling for thousands or millions -- we'll end up with the same size mortgage either way.

My wife and I moved back to Vancouver three years ago, and weren't quite in a position to buy a house. So we waited until we had settled in a bit and watched from the sidelines as prices started skyrocketing.

At a certain point it felt like Seattle during the dot.com boom all over again. People were speculating on housing, buying property because they felt like they were missing out. Can you say pyramid scheme?