"Didn't Japan have decades of 35% asset price-growth, as well,...

"Didn't Japan have decades of 35% asset price-growth, as well, before it tanked?"

Did it? I'll take your word for it. I'll take that instance as another example of what happens to assets that grow too far. too fast. Sounds a lot like an asset growth story we know of that's a lot closer to our own shores.

As for the population growth argument - that hoary old chestnut is the mainstay of the property bull. Here's a look at populations for a number of countries that have suffered a housing bust, compared to Canada & Australia, the torchbearers for forever-rising-house-prices. Its quite clear that population growth in isolation does not guarantee continuing house price appreciation;

Reference:
http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:IRL&dl=en&hl=en&q=ireland+population#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_totl&scale_y=log&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:IRL:GBR:ESP:AUS:JPN:PRT:CAN:USA&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false