bear sees reality

I have been a housing market bear for several years now, being in the finance industry probably has accentuated my bearishness to an extent.

Anyway, my GF and i bid for our first place in Melbourne on the weekend, advertised at $450-490k it went for $555k, about $15k above what we (mostly I) wanted to go. We loved it and are really struggling to find something as good within a 10km radius of it.

The point I'm getting at is that regardless of the low clearance rates, doubling in properties on the market etc, it's still bloody tough to get something for a decent price, good properties are still in plenty of demand and unfortunately I haven't seen the softening in the market make things any easier for us yet (been looking about 12 mths)...

A frustrated and saddened bear...