How high do we want property prices to keep rising? Who wins and who loses? | Simon Kuestenmacher

For decades we've celebrated rising house prices in Australia. If your home was worth more this year than last, life felt a bit easier.   Politicians were happy, banks were happy, homeowners were happy.    But after 50 years of almost uninterrupted price growth, we need to ask a harder question: Is it actually good for us if housing just keeps getting more expensive?    The answer, of course, depends on who you are.    Because rising prices have created a lot of winners in Australia: homeowners, investors, banks, governments, tradies, and retailers.    But they've also created a growing group of losers – renters, younger Australians, essential workers, small businesses, and even the future middle class.   So today leading demographer Simon Kuestenmacher and I discuss the question question almost no one in property likes to touch – not "will housing prices keep rising?" but "how expensive do we actually want housing to be?"    Takeaways   House prices double every decade. Homeowners and banks benefit from rising values. First home buyers face hidden costs. Government policies sustain high prices. Demographics reshape housing market. <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0c