There are differences between most countries property markets that result in anomalies to their relative performance.
1) Relative population growth rates (high in Australia, but much lower in the US and UK and negative in Japan)
2) Mortgage default rates ”” the 90 day default rate on Australian home loans is about 15 and 30 per cent of the level of equivalent default rates on US and UK loans despite historically higher interest rates.
3) Tax treatment of housing - in the US capital gains tax is levied on owner-occupied housing while mortgage interest repayments are tax deductible, neither applies to Australia.
4) Size of their public housing markets - the public housing market share in the UK is far larger than Australia, which in turn has a much bigger private rental market.
5) Rates of home ownership (APPROXIMATES ONLY - 54 per cent in the Netherlands, 42 per cent in Germany, and 35 per cent in Switzerland, but about 70 per cent in Australia)
6) Responsiveness of housing supply to changes in demand - low in supply-constrained countries such as Australia, but higher in many countries such as the US, which has had a problem of excess supply.
7) Urbanisation of their population living in their largest cities as measured by the so-called “Zipf curve” (high in Australia but considerably lower in the US, UK)
Zipf's law, an empirical law formulated using mathematical statistics, refers to the fact that many types of data studied in the physical and social sciences can be approximated with a Zipfian distribution, one of a family of related discrete power law probability distributions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
Some of the reasons as to why "It's different here" - Now this does not mean we are bullet proof to a possible correstion but are some "reasons" that IMO believe when the rates start biting and the IRS & CDF's and USD falter then we have a slightly stronger model that the "other countries". Then again I could be completely wrong and the whole housing market will collapse by 40% at 11.37am on the 11th January 2011 compliments of Steven Keen.
Pretty boring stuff these informative posts. Can't we go back to the name calling again?