General Comments / Chat, page-326

Housing is fine as long as you are not overly leveraged to it. We all live in Australia, so unless you are intending to move country your wealth measured next to your neighbour's wealth is relative. If house prices fall they generally fall together, although local market differences might effect the degree of fall in different suburbs or housing types. When we all wake up after the collapse my house will still be worth relatively as much in comparison to my neighbours or the people that live four suburbs away or in another state. There are actually benefits for us with cheaper housing as it makes housing more affordable for young people. The absolute value of our houses is pretty meaningless. Houses are tangible as they will survive any collapse short of urban warfare, the same can't be said for any form of paper including stocks no matter how much confidence you have in them. Take Qantas for example, a black swan event came along and now it's the subject of a government bailout. Without the bailout the company would have gone bankrupt. The black swan for gold stocks could in theory be the banning of ownership of financial gold in response to currency price shocks. The winners and loser from a property price collapse are determined by individual debt exposures, those least exposed will always win when it comes to investment properties because they are the ones who can afford to drop rents the most and capture the largest proportion of the yield pool. Even an untenanted property can maintain value and preserve wealth as long as its not leveraged. Esh