Housing affordability is the best its been in a decade.

Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens spoke yesterday about housing affordability saying it’s the best it has been in a decade.He said he was unconvinced house prices were overvalued or considered unreasonably high even if the ratio of home prices to income was higher in Australia than it was 15 years ago.

House prices have become more affordable over the past few years but they are still high by world standards and he has put Australia in the middle of the pack with those in comparable countries. Critics though have warned for years that the Australian housing market is in a bubble, much like the credit bubbles seen in Europe and the US before the global financial crisis and fear for Australia's housing market if global growth seriously faltered.  The world is so interconnected that if major problems did arise, then things will get much worse (for Australia) and the biggest problem is the Australian property market.

It has to be said that if in fact we are in a housing market bubble, it seems to be taking quite a long time to pop - if that's what it is going to do. The warning signs we would look for signalling an imminent crash seem less in evidence now than five years ago.

Again these are general comments on the Australian real estate situation as a whole not actually specific areas or suburbs.