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Australia is shockingly expensive the first time you visit there.

Australia is shockingly expensive the first time you visit there. Normal economics just don't seem to be at play. It took me a long time to put my thumb on what Australia is like and it wasn't until I watched the show "Fringe" and saw the alternate universe (with the Airships and the Twin Towers) that it finally struck me, it's like an alternate universe America. Everything is just like the U.S., except for some weird little details. Big cars, lots of open land, cowboy analogs (drovers), purpose built capital designed by a foreigner, densely packed East Coast, East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry. And then suddenly it's not: driving on the left, everything is overpriced, egg yolks are a different color, etc. I remember seeing real estate listing for some really remote housing in some dying gold town somewhere. Like 2 bedroom bungalows with no property. And they're priced at what you'd expect to find in a nearby suburb of Sydney (except the housing in the suburbs around Sydney is ludicrously expensive). While anywhere else in the world people would basically be paying you to take the title so they could get the hell out of there. The local markets in Australia are just weird . note I live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. so I'm used to seeing high prices. But even single bedroom apartments in Sydney suburbs rent out at prices you can get entire houses for in similar geographic regions around my area. You'd think the exact opposite would be true. In almost any other part of the world with plentiful land and low population, you end up with cheap housing, while in Australia that doesn't seem to be true at all.

Posted by bane on Aug 26, 2014, 5:05 PM

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pricing (Housing)

Australia is shockingly expensive the first time you visit there.

baneAug 26, 2014, 5:05 PM

Australia is shockingly expensive the first time you visit there. Normal economics just don't seem to be at play. It took me a long time to put my thumb on what Australia is like and it wasn't until I watched the show "Fringe" and saw the alternate universe (with the Airships and the Twin Towers) that it finally struck me, it's like an alternate universe America. Everything is just like the U.S., except for some weird little details. Big cars, lots of open land, cowboy analogs (drovers), purpose built capital designed by a foreigner, densely packed East Coast, East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry. And then suddenly it's not: driving on the left, everything is overpriced, egg yolks are a different color, etc. I remember seeing real estate listing for some really remote housing in some dying gold town somewhere. Like 2 bedroom bungalows with no property. And they're priced at what you'd expect to find in a nearby suburb of Sydney (except the housing in the suburbs around Sydney is ludicrously expensive). While anywhere else in the world people would basically be paying you to take the title so they could get the hell out of there. The local markets in Australia are just weird . note I live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. so I'm used to seeing high prices. But even single bedroom apartments in Sydney suburbs rent out at prices you can get entire houses for in similar geographic regions around my area. You'd think the exact opposite would be true. In almost any other part of the world with plentiful land and low population, you end up with cheap housing, while in Australia that doesn't seem to be true at all.

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