Okay Sir, I'm interested. You do mean 10% per month, right? What's backing the "company guarantee"? I checked over the website and it looks like more of a concept than a company… what's the most recent tangible net asset value of the company?Cheers, F. [cowboy2]

Spruiker/Tout/Spiv…Somebody who is on the surface offering you something desirable (in this case riches) while hiding his/her true motives (in this case, their own riches). I classify most popular investing literature as spruiker-wares. Also, investing seminars, packages of dvd/audio etcetera. The aim of the people producing these is primarily…[Read more]

neilvs wrote:
My question though is how can the prices in Australia be explained if there is indeed an oversupply of properties about and not an undersupply as the media is reporting?

Just the usual credit-fuelled speculative bubble, in my humble opinion. Note that I never claim "over-supply", just "sufficient or better". [wink]Look up an…[Read more]

neilvs wrote:
I based my opinions of a land/housing shortage on…

Since this thread is titled "…Australia Vs US", I should point out to you that exactly the same "shortage" headlines were common in Florida, the Bay Area of Cali, etc in 2005. I've got clippings of some of them.It's up to you whether to believe the MSM or fact-based analysis.…[Read more]

blogs wrote:
Foundation sorry you will have to excuse my ignorance but what is the x axis? Is that mean/median value, groth etc? wHAT IS IT?

It's a price index. The average value of a US house and an Australian home have been set to 100 in 1890 to enable comparison. What it shows is that in real terms (adjusted for inflation and quality…[Read more]

neilvs wrote:
By contrast, Australia's property market is 'abnormal' in that it generally doesnt have down cycles. There have been some corrections though, for example in parts of Sydney, but this is really only a correction to compensate for the ridiculous rate of price increases during the previous years. In general, property prices have…[Read more]

mathewc73 wrote:
Okays Im from the uneducated school… However I continue to ask myself isnt there something we can all do to soften the blow of the recession?

Stay out of debtGet a 'recession-proof' job or the nearest thing (police/fire/teacher/ambo/nurse etc)Build up a cash-buffer – start with 6 months of living expenses, then shoot for 12…[Read more]

xpine73 wrote:
Getting fixed is a gamble against banks who have more expertise to predict the interest rate trend.

And how well do the banks do?These predictions are from May 2007 when the RBA cash rate was 6.25%. Not a single one correctly predicted 6.75% just 6 months later. AMP and Commsec even believed rates would fall over the course of…[Read more]

Sigh. Wouldn't the length of a year, averaged over the full millennium cycle, actually be 52.1774285714286 (this is accurate since it recurses to zeros beyond this point) weeks?Every fourth year is a leap year unless it happens to be 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 or 3000. So I make that 758 normal years and 242 leap years. That's a…[Read more]

Awww! I'd hoped it was me! I was going to say the 'planet' of the apes…

tammy wrote:
Wow, why so cynical F?

Not at all! I'd love to go. I'm just not prepared to spend $695 on it. If I'm investing that kind of money, I like to know my investment will be CF+ from day one! [wink]It's just an opening bid anyhow. I might go a little higher…Cheers, F. [cowboy2]

I'll give you $10.Cheers, F. [cowboy2]

bruxism wrote:
so what happens next?

Dunno. Next is probably prices up, down or sideways. Forget next. The near term is unpredictable. What this can do is inform your expectations of future property prices, so that your projections remain within a broad band labeled 'possible'. Many people I speak to have long term (ie mortgage-length)…[Read more]

"John Edwards of Residex the Koala Bear says the the average yield during that flat period in the early 1900's was 25 %"Well, John Edwards is a fool then. House prices from 1900 to 1930 averaged around 3x the average annual wage. 25% yield would put average rents at 75% of the average annual gross wage, which is clearly rubbish. Stapledon puts…[Read more]

"So, am i missing something here?  How can this continue?"No.It can't.Historically, periods of falling real house prices prevented house prices from spiralling ever further from wages. More recently, this hasn't happened. Instead the gap has been filled with ever increasing amounts of debt. There's a limit (somewhere) to how far that can go, too.…[Read more]

Nice article, thanks Bardon. I'm a big fan of Shiller. Have you seen this chart from his US real home price data?Here's the same data with the equivalent Australian data (from Nigel Stapledon) overlaid:Cool, huh? I got the chart from discussion here:http://forum.globalhousepricecrash.com/index.php?showtopic=25882&st=0&start=0Believe me, Australia…[Read more]

Jon Chown wrote:
Foundation, you just lost me with your condecending reply. I may not be as adept at drawing graphs as yourself but I am not stupid either.

Apologies. Checking my reply, I see how you read it as condescending. All I meant was that the answers to your questions are contained in the text that you are questioning. Your…[Read more]

Jon Chown wrote:
Take out the word predictable and are you seriously suggesting that this doesn’t happen?

I fail to see any previous 'cycle' here that resembles the current 'cycle' (which I'd strongly suggest is actually a bubble, not part of a normal rising trend):I guess the runup to the early 1970s is close. It was followed by almost t…[Read more]

kum yin lau wrote:
Still, it does remind us that the buying power of cash shrinks. It's called inflation, isn't it?

Precisely. And it is exactly that inflation, actually zero real growth between 1973 and 1998 (see below), which is responsible for most of the "house prices double every 7 to 10 years" meme! The rest coming from the recent,…[Read more]

mrdenn1s wrote:

foundation wrote:
Hey Mr D.I'm thinking about your comment algebraically. If I can establish a limit for what is possible at a national level, and you can identify a small minority of properties that will exceed this limit of possibility, then the remaining majority of properties must perform below and not at this limit,…[Read more]