"With the economy driven by its high rates of reinvestment, this crash hit particularly hard. Investments were increasingly directed out of the country, and manufacturing firms lost some degree of their technological edge and Japanese products became less competitive overseas."
Whilst this is an interesting article it does prove that Australia's position and that of our Real Estate industry is polar opposites to what Japan Experienced in the 1980's and that Australia is no where near the point that Japan was back then. The similarities is that Australia have now only recently generated trade surpluses compared.
However, the key difference is that even though we have trade surpluses we still have a current account deficit of around 5% of GDP, compare that to Japan who has run current account surpluses of around 5% since 1980. Our economy is still dependent on foreign investment and not on the 'reinvestment' or internally driven bubble you outlined in the Japan article.
Secondly Australia's lending standards are head and shoulders above anything that the States had pre 2007 or Japan during its bubble. Compare the book value of CBA to Citi-group or BOA over the last 5 years and see what I mean.
I don't know what property prices will do but betting on a Japan & US style housing bubble is a long shot by any means.
