You've been warned...

Many years have passed since the Economist identified a large, US-subprime style property boom in Australia.  A recent analysis by Leith van Onselen has drawn parallels with the disaster-prone Irish economy:

...Ireland’s house values have collapsed by 50%, on average, since 2007 and the island nation’s home owners have collectively lost the equivalent of A$315bn....Van Onselen notes that in 2004, Ireland was the ‘toast of Europe’, a country with a GDP per capita roughly 20% above the European average....“How things change… As is the case with most housing bubbles, Ireland’s was fuelled by a number of inter-related drivers: easy credit, speculation, and unresponsive supply.” ...

...“The risk for Australia is it basically hinges on the mining boom. If we had a big, big drop-off in mining, we could have a pretty big drastic adjustment. But it’s hard to say what the price adjustment would be if that happened. I couldn’t see Australia being anywhere near 50% [reduction in home values] but 20% could be possible.” (here)