Oct 16, 2023
It’s a reality of modern life that most of the impending
disasters forecast by news media
never happen – and that is particularly so in the property
industry.
Recent years have been full of startling headlines of a collapse of
property prices, including
in 2020 when Covid struck Australia and at the beginning of 2023
when bank economists
predicted prices would drop 15% to 20% because interest rates were
rising.
Journalists love these kinds of “impending doom” stories and are
happy to publish scary
headlines warning of us of dreadful things to come.
It causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety in a community already
struggling with high interest
rates, rising prices for life essentials, climate disasters, the
outbreak of wars, earthquakes
causing devastation and a whole lot more.
Media, of course, never apologises when the disaster they predicted
does not occur.
One of the notions very popular with journalists seeking to
generate clickbait with a startling
forecast is the concept of a cliff. A property market cliff, a
property price cliff, a mortgage
cliff – according to news media, there are always things about to
fall off a cliff.
Except it never happens.