The drastic rises 8 years ago happened globally everywhere due to the low interest rates and the rise of the mainland Chinese middle class with fairly lax capital controls at the time. Can’t entirely blame developers from trying to profiteer. It’s the regulators that have no teeth and opaque goals.

This is the country where ministers happily attribute mass deforestation to "natural disasters" and claim that it's better for tigers to have less trees.

The cronies in charge are doing it for profit not people.

Assuming it is headed the way you foresee, what investments would you suggest the average Joe dabbles in?

That’s financial advice. I think when we look at diversification it’s mainly to reduce concentration risk and it can mean across different asset classes and/or locations as well.

You're not answering my question. I'm not asking why we need to diversify or what diversification means.

You're against people buying multiple properties as an investment or hedge against inflation because the economy outlook is not good. Hence I asked what you think those folks should have invested in, if not in properties.

Your usual shares, managed investments etc. if you wanna do more property, then why not overseas or even landed plots in the rural plots.

Just realised a big issue is that many people don’t know how to math or don’t bother to do basic comparative analysis. Very easy to obfuscate numbers and pull the wool over their eyes.