All pointless debates to be honest. At the end of the day, the believers will keep investing, the doubters will keep avoiding. Recent history has proven the former won, the latter lost.
Will it continue to be the case? There are examples all over mainland Europe now of countries/generations of people who will spend at least 10 years - if not 20 years - in the wilderness with no jobs, no growth prospects, no rising asset prices. 25 years ago, Japan also entered the same wilderness and never recovered. On the opposite end, there are examples all around the world of economic and property markets crashing but powering back up and onwards in a short time such as USA, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, Canada, Norway etc.
There are many structural shifts that carried Australia in the past 30 years. Most people picked them. Dual income families, immigration, globalisation, financial deregulation etc. Does that mean it's all over?
For me, we have yet to see what I believe will be the biggest paradigm shift for Australia in 200 years - and this is the Asian Century, something that a lot of people seem to forget. It's not just about immigration, which is a significant driver in and of itself. It's also about trade. The combined GDP of China, Korea, Indonesia, India and Japan will probably eclipse USA combined with Europe some time in our life time. How will Australia - being the only western country with rule of law, democracy blah blah blah in proximity and in the same timezone - position itself to benefit from this? How will it affect profitability, social well-being, salaries, employment rate? How does that impact house prices? This is arguably a phenomenon that is much more powerful than anything we have seen in the past 30 years, even more powerful than dual income families or financial deregulation.
Another interesting shift is downsizing. Can a 1000sqm inner city land in Sydney really justify $4m? Probably, if Australians of the next generation accept the fact that living in a 100sqm townhouse is the norm, you can think of the inner city house really as costing $400k ($4m divided by 10). People talk about Sydney being one of the most expensive cities in the world. I'd love to see how Sydney land in Mosman stacks up on a per sqm basis versus Paddington in London, TriBeCa in New York, Hiroo in Tokyo, Deep Water Bay in Hong Kong or JingAn in Shanghai.
At the end of the day, who cares. Some will believe and agree with me. Others will try to pick holes in what I say. We can all take pride in winning an argument on the internet, or take pride in making a difference to our real lives.