I was speaking with a friend recently and he said he had to drop the price of his rental property from $450 a week to $350 a week to keep the tenants in the apartment.
Another person told me that, sadly, they took out a hefty loan when the price was high and are now struggling to make interest-only payments on what has proven, in the short-term at least, a depreciating asset.
These experiences demonstrate that some people in Perth are doing it tough.
If big banks like the National Australia Bank Ltd. (ASX: NAB), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ) jack up rates, things could get much worse.
For many in the West, as personal experiences demonstrate, the 'Great Aussie Dream' has already become the 'Great Aussie Nightmare'.
The statistics also paint a fairly grim picture.
In early 2015 I wrote a report about an increase in the number of properties listed for sale in the Perth metropolitan area which came to 13,535 for the week leading up to February 25, according to statistics provided by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA).
At the time, REIWA President David Airey told me that it was a "big jump" compared to the 9,207 listed properties for the same period in 2014.
"After the GFC in 2008, listings grew to more than 15,000 in 2009, and we may approach those numbers again later this year," as Mr Airey told Fairfax Media Limited (ASX: FXJ) in 2015.
The latest figures from REIWA showed that 14,973 houses were listed on Perth's property market, as of the week ending 21 November, 2017.
While this may benefit companies in the real estate advertising business, such as REA Group Limited (ASX: REA) and Domain Holdings Australia Limited (ASX: DHG), it's not great news for those trying to sell property in Perth.
And that's not all.
The median house price in Perth in February 2015 was above $550,000.
In September 2017, the median Perth house price was sitting at $504,320, according to the latest statistics provided by REIWA, representing a decline of more than 8 per cent since February 2015.
What's more, the average selling days for a Perth property has gone from about 50 days to around 70 days over that period of time discussed above.
As such, the question has moved from: 'When will Perth's property market crash?'
It is now: 'How low can it go?'
