A report from the Daily Telegraph on Australia. "Apartment owners in havens for high-rise units are realising their properties are worth less than they paid for them as rampant oversupply and falling demand send real estate values plummeting. Recent sales figures indicated multiple unit owners made a loss on their investments, with some apartments in high rise buildings selling for up to $150,000 below what the sellers paid."

"Such sales were particularly prevalent in construction hubs such as the suburbs of North Ryde and Rosehill, near Parramatta. The suburbs were among the few Sydney areas where average prices have fallen below what they were in 2014, according to CoreLogic."

"Recent loss making sales included three units sold in a North Ryde building complex on Allengrove Crescent. All changed hands within the last three months for more than $120,000 less than what the sellers paid in 2017. The average Sydney home has lost about 15 per cent of its value since the market peaked in July 2017."

From Domain News. "NAB chief economist Alan Oster said debt levels were concerning, saying general economic anxiety could damage the property market despite its recent boosts. 'Across the broader population there are signs that consumers are struggling to balance their budgets, there are still some who are getting into further trouble [with their mortgages], and those 90 days past due are increasing,' he said. 'That says to us people don’t have enough money to balance the books, and that’s showing in retail sales as well.'"

"'The biggest downside risk is in the apartment space where you’ve clearly got an over-build. It fell last year and will again this year,'he said. ‘Who knows?’ is the short answer. If you look at supply and demand, it’s significantly over-built.'"

From 7 News. "Australians' mortgage debt has continued to grow faster than the value of real estate assets, as house prices plummet for a fifth consecutive quarter. The decline in property prices also pushed the ratio of Australians' mortgage debt to real estate assets from 28.1 per cent to 29.0 per cent, matching the all-time peak reached in July 2013."

From AFP International Business. "Once dubbed the 'Goldilocks economy' for avoiding the pitfalls of the global financial crisis, Australia has seen 27 years of uninterrupted expansion -- unprecedented in the developed world. But the outlook appears increasingly bearish, and resilient Australia's faltering growth could be the canary in the coal mine for the world economy."

"Like many advanced economies, Australia's unemployment rate is not too bad, but like elsewhere there has been a troublesome mixture of high personal debt and stagnant wages. In response, Australians are being more thrifty -- spending less on eating out, paying little heed to almost constant high street discounts, and, crucially, spending less on rent and accommodation."

"The downturn has exposed weakness in the Australian economy that had been masked by China's insatiable appetite for Australian commodities. The economy now looks less like Goldilocks and more like the emperor with no clothes."

"That's a big lesson for the rest of the world as it picks up the pieces after the financial crisis, Gabriele Gratton of the University of New South Wales said. 'The Australian economy didn't diversify enough and it exposed itself to a situation where Australian households are highly indebted,' Gratton told AFP."

"Chinese growth also contributed to the sharp rise in housing prices as both locals and foreigners piled into the market, particularly in the major cities Sydney and Melbourne. But the Chinese economy has been losing momentum in recent years, reducing the demand for commodities and properties in the sun."

"'If prices do not collapse, then nothing happens. But if prices do collapse, it will cause the type of (problems) that we've seen in Ireland or in Spain,' Gratton said."

"With interest rates already so low, stimulus spending could be on the cards. But both the central bank and the government have limited room for manoeuvre. 'The problem is you don't have the policy instruments that we can pull now that we pulled in the global financial crisis,' National Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster told AFP."

The New Statesman. "When I arrived in Australia and turned on the TV in my hotel room, I was bombarded with adverts for mortgage refinancing, equity withdrawal and cheap credit cards."

"In St Kilda, a trendy district in the south of Melbourne, entire streets were covered in boarded-up shops plastered with the logos of various real estate companies. On one street, someone had taken a Sharpie and written 'lower your rent' over every sign, and homeless men and women could be found sheltering in the unused doorways."

"A few days later, I recounted my experience to one of the organisers of the political conference I attended, telling him that all the signs pointed to a property boom that was running out of steam. He nodded in agreement: 'my house is worth no more today than it was when I bought it two years ago.'"

"Economists failed to pay attention to any of these indicators before the crash, instead dubbing the period between 1989 and 2007 the 'great moderation' — a time of high growth, low inflation and generalised economic and financial stability. Only when the boom finally ended did they realise the veneer of moderation had concealed a wellspring of excess."

"But the financial crisis did not spell the end of financialisation — instead, it heralded another phase of its expansion. Since the financial crisis, property prices in Sydney and Melbourne have risen 105 per cent and 94 per cent respectively. Private debt-to-GDP, which includes all household and corporate debt, has increased from 184 per cent of GDP in 2010 to 205 per cent today. Household debt is more than 200 per cent of average incomes, making Australian households some of the most indebted in the world."

"Wandering around the conference I was attending, there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the air. In allowing the boom to continue as long as they have, Australia’s political and economic elites have clearly prioritised short-term profits over the nation’s long-term economic health."