Same thing in London. Foreign buyers is the big bogeyman, but the reality is that prices are sky high even in areas where foreign buyers are not the slightest bit interested in putting their money.

The reality is that most foreign buyers here rent out their properties - it's an investment after all - and it's only on the very, very high end of the market that people leave their properties empty for any amount of time, and that's a very tiny proportion of the total market.

But it is convenient to be able to blame someone else and avoid making the hard policy decisions requires to boost construction.

(while I agree leveraging makes it worse, though, the underlying problem is still competition for a too constrained supply of housing - I don't know about Australia, but in the UK house-building has trailed demand for decades at this point; to a large extent because of short-sighted policies which focuses infrastructure investments in already overheated areas and makes it even more attractive to move there, coupled with lack of willingness to open new areas for construction or relaxing restrictions on new developments in terms of height etc. outside of very small areas)