Melbourne and Singapore seem to be leading the race to be amongst the highest cost of living cities globally. How things have gone one full circle. For back in the mid 1990s, the "unlucky country" that was Australia, for she was still reeling from the after effects of the hangover days ago of the once roaring commodity boom. And literally, properties were on sale cheap with few takers, and on first impressions, Australia seemed like a 3rd World country then.
Today, prices are up 4 to 5 times from those depressed days. And the wealth is s palpable.
Singapore was no different then, albeit it needed a full blown Asian crisis in 1998 to bring the euphoria to a grinding halt. And today we are a prosperous global city.
Today, with asset prices not just in Australia and Singapore but in many major cities near their all time high, what would the picture be like a decade from now? Is the lost decades of a once mighty Japan a harbinger of greed gone overboard?
Will real estate, long treasured to be an investment be reclassified as a consumable, as in the case of present day Japan?
What goes up must come down. This old adage seems passé in the present very indulgent world of our Central Bankers. But man plans, God directs.
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