The real lesson from Australia’s property slump

The Australian housing market's hallowed 'soft landing' is starting to look like wishful thinking, says John Stepek. And that's not good news for the future of our own housing bubble.

The economic outlook for the UK isn't getting any better.

Yesterday, doorstep lender Provident Financial reported that bad debts jumped by 5% in the first half of this year, and now stand at £106.4m. The group's customers who are undoubtedly at the sharp end of the credit market - are clearly feeling the squeeze from rising energy and food bills.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.