“It’s not a house, it’s a home.” Daryl Kerrigan nailed our obsession with home ownership in the iconic Australian film The Castle.

But is this obsession actually doing us any good?

The Kerrigans owning the Australian dream in The Castle, 1997 Credit:Village Roadshow

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned in June that housing bubbles across the Anglo-Saxon world are doing a lot of damage.

“IMF research shows that of the nearly 50 systemic banking crises in recent decades, more than two thirds were preceded by boom-bust patterns in house prices,” said Dr Min Zhu, deputy managing director of the IMF.