what drives the house prices

Reading this forum over the last couple of weeks there seems to be a lot of people with differences of opinions on what drives property prices up and down.

from what i have learnt over the years from buying and selling a few houses is the following.

1. when there is a shortage of land for residential building house values go up.

2. when there is a new land release anywhere, stage 1 starts off at say $120000, once sold stage 2 is offered at $130000 and so on. once all stages are sold house prices stablize for that area

3.land value is what drives Capital Growth!,pick a house to build from your favourite home builder. 4 beds double garage a couple of toilets etc, now build one 10km from your capital city and the other 20km away! what do you get? about $50000 difference in value. or pick a shitty suburb against a better suburb,same outcome in most cases. Its the land value that drives the prices

4. government release to much land at once its like diluting shares in a company.prices soften, this is why they dont do it.

5.The Media has a lot of power in driving prices up and down in certain suburbs.Televise and Publicize crime, crap weather,accidents etc.