Any idea of what the unemployment rate was at the beginning of the last boom ?

Merry Christmas C2, maybe they are all out enjoying the holidays.  

Some people are saving, they may save it in property or shares as opposed to saving it in a bank but at the end of the day its still saving.  I don't know about other people but right now I look at the low bank returns and the inflation rate and don't see any reasons to keep the money in a bank. Tax or no tax the returns suck, the chance of any capital gains is 0 and I can't claim any tax deductions for traveling to the bank to see how my savings are doing or any depreciation expenses on my passbook . 
 

Why, you still hope against all hope for some large falls ?
Don't get greedy , we had some falls already   at least in the budget end of the market. I think its possible the top end of the market $1M+ will still go down a few more %, maybe, but I wouldn't put the house on it. At the budget end you have the FHOG and lower rates starting to kick in soon, my guess is that we'll see some evidence of a recovery by January and the market will continue to improve for the rest of 2009. Unemployment rate may go up but for every forced seller due to a job loss there are probably 100's of potential home buyers waiting to snap up a bargain so I wouldn't expect that to cause any price falls. There are still a few sellers who fell on hard times when the rates went higher and are still forced to sell at a loss but their numbers are coming down fast. On the other side of the equation you have buyers who have been sitting on the fence and are probably getting restless by now so at first sign of prices moving upwards they'll jump in afraid they may miss out .
If I was looking to buy a place in the budget range I'd be quick about it , would try to find a bargain over the next 2-3 weeks and negotiate hard. Once the RBA drops the rates in December by another 0.75% or more likely 1% the market will start moving , the buyers will come out of the woodwork and sellers won't be willing to consider silly offers anymore.

As opposed to being unemployed or having to take some menial job in a factory ? Too many scientists were left out in the cold in the post-cold war era so the GW scam was the perfect excuse to get them feeding on the taxpayers tit again. And while there why not use that as an excuse to put up some new taxes as well, right ? Could help to replace the revenue lost from the declining sales of tobacco products.

never tried to, I'll leave that for F.

So really its the income drop that is causing your problems then since the house more or less pays for itself.  Forget about any price drops for a moment since they are irrelevant if you decide to hold on to it. At  $120 p/w you could just about stay on the dole and work 6 hrs p/w to continue paying  it off. 
I'd be having a good look at that franchise business of yours and see if its worth keeping it.  Not sure what you've got but if its anything like the mobile touch-up paint vans and or the mobile car detailing franchises  I'd cut my losses and get a job. They haven't done that well even during the good times.
Another thing you could try before you decide is to ask 2-3 RE agents over for a free quote and try to find  out how much would they think it would realistically sell for,  what is their cut ,what other fees & taxes would you have to pay.  Also check with your bank about the early discharge fees,any penalty fees, etc. Once you have all that you can work out  how much profit or loss you end up with. You may find that  at the end of the day you could have no IP but still own the bank some money and have repayments much higher then the $120 p/w you pay now.
As I said before, only you can make the right decision for you.

cheers

So with another 1.75% rate cut you'd be in front ?

In the current market with everyone sitting on the fence if you do put it on the market now you'll probably get tire kickers and bargain hunters offering 20% below market value. Not sure what the agents charge in your parts but at a guess I'd say expect at least 2%-3% in fees.
On the other hand if you do get some decent offers its probably because the market has started to move upwards again. You'd be selling at the bottom after struggling to keep it and pay it off for 4-5 years for ZERO gain. By the time settlement has occurred the buyer would most likely end up with a positively geared property and possibly even some capital gain.

Maybe, its hard to predict the market 5 to 10 months ahead let alone 5 to 10 years. Perfect example was 4-5 months ago, economists were predicting rates to go up at least twice more before X-mas and to push them into double digits. Now you get some joker predicting rates going down to 0%

Only you can decide if selling or not selling is the right choice for you. If I was in this situation I'd hold on and if the business wasn't doing to well I'd get another job to supplement my income until the rates came down a bit more.
Not only are the rates falling and will continue to do so for a while but I think they will stay low for a very very long time. By pumping all that billions into the market and guaranteeing bank deposits to calm nervous investors all they did was set the market for an oversupply of cash in the future. Bad news for cash returns and good news for shares and property. By X-mas 2009 I believe that based on today prices we could easily see gains of 25%-30% on shares and 15%-20% on property prices and the RBA rate down to around 2.5%
In the end its your decision whichever way you want to go but before you decide ,
1. have a good look at all this doom and gloom and see how much of it is real and how much is media hype.
2. take a short holiday or at least a weekend away somewhere quiet before making a calm and rational decision. (somewhere without TV news, newspapers or mobile phones preferably )
3. decide
 

cheers & good luck

Ok, you've got me.
Too bad your google powers are a bit limited or you'd have also seen this,
http://reiwa.com/res/res-urban-profile.cfm?suburb_id=2475&census_code=SSC52326&geogroup_id=4044&geogroup_parent_id=17
And the freeway extension is not even complete yet. LOL

Yes it was a bit of bad timing, I should have gone with one of the big banks instead but its all fixed now. Bitter may not be the right word here, since its all part of the NG and tax deductibile you'd have more reason to be bitter then me. I hate to waste, specially when it comes to money coming out of the taxpayer's pockets and going into the lenders pocket. Lucky for you that with silver you don't have to worry about NG, returns or wasting the taxpayer's money. How is the silver going by the way , has it made it back past the USD10 yet ?

There is no need for any filters. I say get rid of the evil broadband altogether and go back to the 110 bps acoustic couplers, lets see you try downloading porn or pirated movies over that.

And who said Rudd wasted his time in China at the taxpayers expense ? He picked up a lot more then just the Mandarin language from the Maoists but just imagine what a GREAT leader he'd be if he had the chance to study under the KGB and Stasi ?
Make if we send him on a fact finding mission OS and some training with Putin, Kim & Mugabe, hopefully before the next election,  then have a proper referendum on becoming a republic he could become The chosen one.