When it comes to the rapidly cooling property market, I’m part of the problem.

At the start of this year I was looking to buy a house in Sydney, despite most likely having to sell a kidney and ownership rights of my first born to do so.

We’ve all been told for so long you need to be on that you need to get on that property ladder sooner or later, and as house prices continued to soar to unprecedented levels, I figured I had better opt for sooner.

Reporter Tom Steinfort's house-buying quest revealed that we're all part of the problem facing the housing market. (60 Minutes)

But after a couple of months after I began my search, I got an email from a real estate agent telling me that the owner of a property I’d taken an interest in was willing to accept offers of $250,000 below the asking price.

“Sorry, do you mean $25,000?” I replied, assuming that was some sort of typo. Nope, it was spot on – they were willing to cop a quarter of a million-dollar loss.

That to me said they were panicking, and in turn, it made me panic that this was definitely not a good time to be getting in to the market.

And so I decided I was going to sit it out for a year or two and just see how far prices will fall.

(60 Minutes)

Turns out I’m far from alone – clearance rates are now down significantly from the madness of a year or two ago, and the dip in property prices can so quickly become a crash when people like me lose confidence in the market.

The million/trillion dollar question now is how far will prices fall – several of the experts we interviewed for this story estimate it could be as much as 40 percent in Melbourne and Sydney, while even the most optimistic property analysts concede there will be a drop of at least 10-15 percent.

(60 Minutes)

The problem with these situations is that they can very quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies – that if everyone gets scared, no one ends up buying, and prices fall and fall until eventually people decide prices are so low that they’d be mad not to cash in.

There are numerous factors to blame here – banks tightening up lending restrictions, the end of many interest-only loans, an over-supply of apartments, and the simple fact that everyone probably got a bit carried away with our property boom in the last decade and created an over-inflated marketplace.

So we’re all the cause of the crash, but we’ll all eventually be the solution as well – once people decide there are bargains to be had, the market will roar back to life.

(60 Minutes)

For now though, significant doubts remain.

Confidence is an extremely rare and elusive commodity – legendary AFL coach Mick Malthouse often lamented when his team was in a form slump that “you can’t buy confidence” – but this is the one time that statement is actually wrong, because as soon as buyers return, so too will confidence in the market.

But when that will be is anyone’s guess, and I for one am planning on sitting this one out for some time yet.

Watch the full story on the 60 Minutes website.