Unhedged thinks property prices in China are out of control The reasons are the same as for Canberra prices being high.
Residents and investors know that, apart from plateau periods when the Libs slash public service numbers (which soon bounce back to manage Lib programs) that over time prices must rise because Canberra is the capital city of the only nation on Earth to have a whole continent all to itself.
"All To Ourselves" explains Border Protection fanaticism.
And it also explains why Canberra cannot help but become a big city, or a very big city, much sooner than predicted. I can see Canberra getting bigger every day of the week and houses and units getting dearer as the years pass.
Hence my suggestion to any friends willing to listen: If you can afford to buy a house or unit to live in in Canberra and you don't do that, your grandkids would be justified in kicking your gravestone over for lack of Dynastic Forethought.
AND that is what Chinese people are doing when they make home-ownership their top priority. In China the family comes first and no sacrifice is too great to secure Dynastic Survival over the centuries.
Irish people who migrated to Australia had the same obsession with buying land and for the same reason. Like the Chinese they had been deprived of their right to own land by British (not Communist) dispossession.
My Irish ancestors migrated here for land and no sacrifice was to great to get land:
