A fair instinct, but a big nominal give-back requires forced sellers at scale, and that supply mostly isn't there. The one mechanism that produces a broad price crash is a real economic downturn that generates mass foreclosures and forced, bank-owned liquidations. In past busts, the Great Recession and earlier Southern California downturns, a huge share of listings were distressed sales, and that supply is what drove prices down. That setup mostly isn't in place today. Most owners sit on substantial equity and a below-market rate they locked in, so they face little pressure to sell at a loss. Forced sales still happen through death, divorce, illness, or job loss, just not in the volume that cracks a whole market unless a serious recession creates them. So rather than predict a direction, which nobody can honestly promise, we'd point to the more common way an overheated market normalizes: an extended run of flat-to-below-trend nominal prices while inflation and rising incomes do the work underneath. That's a correction in real terms without a nominal crash, and it can take years. A sharp drop in rates would change the calculus by pulling demand forward. Your outcome rides on local supply, local jobs, and rates. Watch those over the national appreciation headline.