As a wave, unlikely while homeowners sit on meaningful equity. Equity is the variable to watch, more than any calendar. A short sale only becomes possible when someone owes more than the home will net after costs, so it takes a specific setup. The realistic candidate is someone who bought very recently, with little money down (an FHA buyer at the minimum down payment is the classic case), in a market that then softened, and who has to move before building any cushion. In that narrow situation there may not be enough equity to cover both sides' agent compensation and closing costs, which is what pushes a sale short. Even then it's hardly automatic: - The borrower has to document genuine hardship to get the lender to agree. - The lender only takes the short-sale route when that's actually its best recovery compared with the alternatives. When most owners hold substantial equity and low locked-in rates, almost none of that applies. A stressed seller can usually sell at a discount and still walk away with money. Short sales stay rare in a high-equity environment and only become common after a stretch where a lot of people bought late, with thin down payments, into a market that fell. We can't promise where any market heads, but that's the mechanism to watch.