ergh, i loathe discussing housing as an investment vehicle as house pricing is not a particularly good benchmark for measuring anything. it is a mirco-economy unto itself and sits in a little bubble around sydeny and melbourne. In my mind it tends to be a false economy, a debt driven consumer market,nothing more. because as you sell out to realise your profit you have to buy back in to the same expensive market...interest rates, insurances, levies, maintenance, stamp duty and taxes, all cut into the "value" and people rarely factor that into their sale price, its normally just "i bought for X and sold for Y" how good am i. The opportunity costs are enormous, even with renters. Primary residences don't count because you need a house to live in and so even if you were to sell ... again you'd need buy another house. the overall trend too is just reflecting the insane out of control cost of living in this country the prices are actually reflecting a devalued currency not a hyper inflated market.... not that Australian CPI followes the same vector as your housing pricing chart.
realestate is only a good investment if you can buy it in cash with no overhead.
Certainly i agree the average joy doesn't "need" gold but at some point (soon or 100 years time) the housing market will slow, stall or collapse and gold will keep ticking along.
