Mate, to get the same ratio of people in Victoria to say London, you'd need 6x as many people. Hence their market rose too fast and is now falling.
Rises of 20 - 25% between 00-06 werent uncommon. Those sorts of rises werent experienced in Australia except perhaps last year, hence some of the unwinding. Plus their economy is crap with nothing to fall back on except their dwindling finance sector.
The fact that Rudd gave the battlers some more money is great for those holding apartments and flats sub $400k. They just had a 10-15k floor put under the value of their properties.
That said, I've always said prices will soften over the next 18 months, you're just reading Keen (who's a permabear, someone said if you call a crash every year for 10 years youll be right eventually - totally agree).
