But while booms are fun the busts that regularly follow are anything but. Which is what makes a recent report into the state of housing markets around the world by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) particularly timely.

The OECD is one of the world's leading economic analysis and policy groups. It has 30 member countries (including Australia) and it has looked at housing markets across all its member countries so we can see how Australia compares to countries across Europe, the US and Asia.

The results that have gathered the headlines so far are the analysis that on some measures the Australian housing market was 52% overvalued in 2004. That put our housing market in a scary league of its own - only the UK was close with an overvaluation estimate of 33%. Germany's housing market by contrast was 25% undervalued.

However, that was just one measure and the OECD arrived at the valuation estimate by looking at the price-to-rent ratio - the economists took the nominal house price index and divided it by the rent component in the consumer price index.

It also looked at mortgage debt burdens and in most countries in the OECD while debt burdens have been rising the ability to service them has been relatively stable thanks to falling interest rates. The main exceptions to that are Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Now more recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has shown house prices falling in major markets like Sydney and Melbourne. That will have improved the price to rent ratio and local economists like Access Economics have argued that the real overvaluation figure for our house prices is more like 13% than 52%.

While the headlines have focused on the overvaluation figure the OECD report is more interesting for the historical perspective it gives to previous house price booms and busts.

For a start anyone who is still under the delusion that you can never lose money on property ought to get a copy of the OECD report to better understand how cyclical the housing market is.

The paper has looked at housing markets around the world over the past 35 years.

What it found was the typical housing price cycle lasts about 10 years. There is typically an expansion or growth phase of about six years where real prices increase on average about 40%. That is followed by a downturn or correction phase which the OECD says typically last around five years and prices fall in the order of 25%.

Now one of the common catchcrys in the middle of any good boom is the "its different this time" which is usually the only explanation left when prices have got completely out of line with fundamental valuation principles.

But according to the OECD the last housing boom was truly different. What makes it different?

For a start the size of the real price gains in Australia, Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US far exceeded price increases of previous upturns.

Second, the price run up has lasted a lot longer - in our case twice as long as previous house price cycles.

To help explain that the OECD looked at links between house cycles and other business economic cycles. What is obvious here is that from the 1970s to the late 1990s is that real house prices and the business cycle moved in similar directions. So the business cycle peaked in 1978-79 as did house prices; same story in the late 1980s. But something happened to decouple the two cycles around the start of 2000.

The OECD report looks to explain this shift in a number of ways. It argues that financial deregulation in mortgage markets has been an important factor because of the way it significantly reduced borrowing constraints on households.

In Australia, according to the OECD increased competition among credit providers has seen a doubling of the number of products provided by lenders including things like non-conforming loans.

Then there has been speculative pressure from the "buy-to-let" market. Australia is not alone here. In Australia the proportion of investors doubled from around 15% of total mortgage lending in 1992 to about 30% at the end of 2003. In the US the proportion of sales attributable to such investors has risen dramatically to 15% of all home purchases in 2004 - much higher than the normal 5% according to the OECD.

The OECD is not predicting a big bust in the property market - it would probably take a steep hike in interest rates to spark that - but its analysis is a great insight into a long-running investment boom and the factors that have driven it longer and higher than all those before it.