Sometimes you need a few decades’ worth of perspective: Australian property prices 1880 to now

There’s a fascinating post up on Macrobusiness that looks at Australian property values over the past 100 years.

The data, compiled by Philip Soos, says this: no matter what way you look at it (comparisons to GDP per capita, annual incomes, inflation, whatever) housing prices started to rise faster than other goods and as a total percentage of people’s income from the 1950s, and for much of the past 60 years have continued to do so.

Only in the past couple of years have we seen any decline, and even then it’s tiny compared to how much property values have risen overall.

It’s always tricky drawing on the past to predict the future, but Soos reckons it’s the biggest housing bubble in Australia’s history, the popping of which will bite heavily-indebted property owners. One thing’s for sure: the charts are definitely worth a look.