Darwin is a boom-bust town and pretty much always has been.

It's entering a bust now because Inpex is wrapping up. I expect unit prices will fall sharply, now that there's a glut.

I was there a few weeks ago for the first time in several years and was basically amazed by how many new apartment buildings had been stamped out.

Oh yes, they are busy putting up apartments everywhere, but I think a vast majority of them - possibly more than 50% will sit empty for a while when Inpex reaches endgame. Just across the road from us, they started building a 4 storey apartment/shopping complex last year, but the company in charge pulled it a few months ago because they could see the writing on the wall. It's just a 1/4 built concrete framework, and likely to stay that way for years.

We visit the local markets frequently, and almost all the stall holders (some who have been at the markets for 2 or more decades) are struggling. All the local hotels and services apartments are occupied by fly in fly out workers, taking rooms that tourists normally buy in the dry season, and they don't visit markets or spend coin locally. Inpex was touted as a boon for the Northern Territory, but it has been a total bust for us. I really love Darwin, but I fear it will be a ghost town in a few years.

Did you walk down the mall in the CBD when you were here? Notice how many empty shops and 'For Lease' signs were up all over the place?

We used to have a solid public service contingent in this town, which sort of kept things going through the lean times, but even that is under threat. Our newly elected Territory government is looking to axe 100+ jobs over this year via natural attrition. We've already sold off most of our high value assets (the port and our TIO insurance company etc.), and the Federal government have just announced they are slashing $2billion from our GST revenue share over the next few years. There is not much left in the kitty.

I used to live in Adelaide. There's no way I could afford to buy a house anywhere I actually wanted to live.

Some out of the ordinary life circumstances arose, and I ended up moving to Launceston in Tasmania. I was able to buy a house in an area I wanted to live in here for $215,000. I can't fathom taking on twice that on, even on dual incomes, that sort of loan would make me feel ill.

My job is in metal fabrication, the past 12 months have been much slower than the previous 10 years, things have slowed down a great deal.

Only twice that? In Sydney, median house prices are north of $1,000,000 now, and in my unsexy and until recently very-working-class inner west suburb the median is tickling $2M.

(Yes, it's completely insane, and even more insane is that nobody else seems to find it insane...)

Really? I would consider Adelaide a much easier place to afford to buy property. It has not really seen as high or as long period of price increase as the eastern state cities.

But I guess that's the case everywhere in Australia. The places where a young person wants to live (young / without children) is not somewhere which they can afford.

I've visited Tasmania a few times and LOVE Launceston. Would move there in a heartbeat, but the trick is, if things don't work out, we could never, EVER afford to move back here. I have older parents etc. still living here, so can see that we might have to either stay, or work out some sort of cunning plan to try and share time between the two locations.

$215,000 wouldn't even buy you a 1 bedroom squat here. I could probably sell my place and buy a BIG place in Launceston, but like I said, if it ever came that we had to move back here to care for elders, it won't be possible at all.

Hey give it a go renting, I moved to Tassie for a year and that turned into 5. Hobart is awesome and before I bought my place 7 minutes from the CBD for 330K, I used to rent a place for 250 a week. And now my mortgage payments are still less than what I was paying for a townhouse in Canberra. Locals think its expensive, but play the long game with Tassie and things are looking good.

But ALL houses have not increased in price, only the ones that were offered up for sale. So, niche salary gains and niche housing price spikes. If all the houses came for sale on the same day, I guarantee the prices would not remain this high, but that's not how it works.