A friend in Canberra mailed me this cutting but no surprises here: real estate prices are away with the fairies! Mind you, it's in the nation's capital and on a massive 2089m2 block opposite parkland and the Prime Minister's Lodge.
What is surprising is that the whole country is now in the grip of a real estate frenzy. Even down here in little Nelligen and nearby Batemans Bay and communities up and down the coast, two full hours' drive from Canberra and four hours from Sydney, what was once expensive at half-a-million has now become a cheap one-million dollars - and the rest!
Take a squiz here at the sheer ordinariness a million dollars buys you these days: houses which have four bedrooms because the bedrooms are as small as bathrooms, and the two bathrooms are as small as toilets, on blocks of land which are now typically less than 750m2, and more often closer to 500m2, with the house's eaves touching the neighbours' eaves.
And while you need a fat wallet - or a very understanding bank manager - to buy any of these architectural wonders, you want to be very slim or else walk sideways along your house to reach the backyard. And the hours spent in the bosom of your family be better spent quietly, because with neighbours so close on all sides, it's a matter of "Feind hört mit!"
When will this madness end? No one seems to know! Will it end! Most certainly! Will it end in tears? For the FOMO-driven johnny-come-latelies it certainly will! In the meantime, the agents are loving their bigger commissions, the state governments are loving the higher stamp duty revenue, and the banks are loving their ever-increasing mortgage-books.
