A generations-long shibboleth about house prices has just been shattered

July 16, 2026 — 3:00am

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It is – or was – the bedrock conventional wisdom of Australian politics.

As John Howard noted in a radio interview back in 2003, the nation’s voters want the value of their houses to keep going up and up and up.

“Anybody who owns a house is very happy that the value of that house has gone up; let’s be quite straight about that,” he told Brisbane radio.

“I haven’t found anybody in 7½ years shake their fist at me and say, ‘Howard, I’m angry with you for letting the value of my house increase’.”

Saying there’s an upside to falling house prices is sacrilege. But Labor needs to admit it

For decades, the view among almost every member of the federal parliament, the shock jock community and the angry columnists of newspapers and pay TV channels, was that people did not want house prices to fall.

Onward and upward was the way to political success. And beware anyone who had the temerity to suggest a drop in house prices might be needed to keep homes affordable for new home-buyers.

But something has happened over the intervening two decades. The housing market has become utterly broken.

And the Australian public is changing its views in response.

Over the past month, three opinion polls – two for this masthead by Resolve Political Monitor, the other for Sky News – have revealed large numbers of Australians think house prices have to fall.

Resolve Political Monitor

A growing majority say house prices have to fall. Even owners

The most recent Resolve poll, released this week, showed the........

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