jimbo_d

People need to take a step back, it's iron ore that's in trouble, there's still $200bn+ of gas projects underway in Australia, not to mention coal and all the other resources that are extracted.

Amazulu

and still plenty of iron-ore projects on the go too...........

bingobob777

200bn of gas projects planned and commited to before the US stumbled upon fracking and dropped the price by 40%

I also have a working interest in the coal networks and things aren't looking good, at current prices there is no money to be made in extracting something, sending it 500km by train and then thousands of km by boat.

Zen10

Yes, it's iron AND coal prices that are bombing.

Australia_bound?

Very odd thread where some strange people seem to be taking great delight at people ending up with negative equity & having no jobs. Odd world we live in...

As for the stuff about Gas (as I work in the industry), there's plenty of profit to be made & an ever growing market for LNG. Gorgon at 40 odd billion $ will pay for itself in the first 3 years of operation, so obviously the market must be awful if that's the case.

Betty Boot

Got to agree, seems that folk who have been there a while and are already established are taking pleasure in scaring the c**p out of those who are ready to arrive in OZ

Find it hard to believe that it is all doom and gloom for the mining industry when my husband has just been offered a fairly well paid job in Perth for a large mining company - would have thought they would be looking at redundancies rather than employing

bingobob777

People ending up in negative equity means falling prices, that IS good news for a lot of people, absolutely nothing odd about people taking delight in it.

Kalenge

Yep, it's the usual green envy monsters that lurk about whenever there's the slightest hint of a bit of uncertainty in the economy. They don't like anyone else to have what they can't have.

renth

It will be great to be able to afford to go out to eat at a restaurant again, or go to a pub and have a few pints. Bring it on!

Zen10

It's more that they want the same opportunities everyone else had. You will note the subtle difference.

bingobob777

It's not even that, falling house prices would benefit people looking to but their first home, people looking to buy a more expensive home and the economy as a whole.

The only people who don't want prices to fall are people looking to downsize or "investors" whose rent doesn't cover their mortage and rely on price growth to ever make any money. These people assume every one else is negative, when in actual fact they're living in cloud cuckoo land and can't accept that if they bought in the last 5 years there is no money to be made.

Zen10

And lenders!

Grayling

Nonsense.

I could buy houses for cash if I chose to but won't because they are ridiculously overpriced and it can not last.....I will wait for the inevitable.

If prices don't come down I won't bother but buy in UK instead....or keep my money invested elsewhere.

Absolutely nothing to do with envy.....more common sense.

bingobob777

what a millstone around my neck that's losing money every day, yep could really do with one of those

Chortlepuss

Overinflation of house prices benefits no-one apart from greedy investors. I believe it destabalises economies in ways we don't often think of - the need for two parents to be flogging their guts out at work instead of spending some time with their families for instance, the ridiculousness of homelessness when a priveledged few own scores of houses. I speak of someone with heaps of equity in a property who'd rather the property had increased with inflation. If the banks had retained their 3* lending criteria (it was bloody hard to get a mortgage when I started out) all this nonsense could have largely been prevented. Whether we want houses or drop or not, they will because the prices are unsustainable. I'd love to see a world where houses are for people to live in, not some get rich quick ponzi scheme for a few wide boys. One of the best thing about the last housing crisis? Estate agents going out of business. Bring it on!