It’s a reality of modern life that most of the impending disasters forecast by news media never happen – and that is particularly so in the property industry.

Recent years have been full of startling headlines of a collapse of property prices, including in 2020 when Covid struck Australia and at the beginning of 2023 when bank economists predicted prices would drop 15% to 20% because interest rates were rising.

Journalists love these kinds of “impending doom” stories and are happy to publish scary headlines warning of us of dreadful things to come.

It causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety in a community already struggling with high interest rates, rising prices for life essentials, climate disasters, the outbreak of wars, earthquakes causing devastation and a whole lot more.

Media, of course, never apologises when the disaster they predicted does not occur.

One of the notions very popular with journalists seeking to generate clickbait with a startling forecast is the concept of a cliff. A property market cliff, a property price cliff, a mortgage cliff – according to news media, there are always things about to fall off a cliff.

Except it never happens.