Measure it, and measure it small: closed sales in your specific zip code, tracked over time. "Southern California" is far too broad to say anything useful about. Two zip codes a few miles apart can move in opposite directions, so start by drilling down to the neighborhood you actually care about. The cleanest read is comparable sales. Look at what similar homes have actually closed at, and track that month over month and year over year. Rising closed prices mean appreciation; softening closed prices mean the area is giving ground. List prices and headlines won't tell you this. Closed sales will. For the longer view, add the fundamentals that drive those sales: job growth, and which industries and employers are moving in or out. Jobs and in-migration support prices. Jobs leaving pull prices down. Inglewood shows how fast fundamentals can flip an area upward. As major sports franchises and new stadium and arena development moved in, demand and values climbed well past how the neighborhood was perceived a decade earlier. Serious, sustained depreciation usually requires the same forces in reverse: a big employer leaving, a jump in crime, a structural shift in who wants to live there. So watch closed comps for the near-term signal, and jobs and migration for the long-term one.