The charts look similar; the engines underneath are very different, and the difference is affordability. In the early 1980s, mortgage rates were genuinely extreme, high single digits into low double digits, so affordability looked terrible at a glance. But prices were much lower relative to incomes than they are now, and the market carried a baked-in expectation that the Fed would eventually break inflation and rates would fall. That's what happened across the 80s and 90s. Even with rates in the 8 to 11 percent range for years, incomes kept climbing and rates kept easing, so affordability improved over time and buyers who bought were rewarded. Today the pieces sit differently. Prices are at a very high level relative to incomes, while rates, elevated versus the ultra-low pandemic era, sit closer to their long-run normal than to the 1981 extremes. The early-80s buyer started from cheap-ish prices with rates that had nowhere to go but down. Today's buyer starts from expensive prices and roughly normal rates, so the same tailwind isn't there to lean on. Nobody can promise where prices or rates go from here, and we won't. Structurally, though, the broad, easy appreciation that followed the early 80s is a much harder setup to repeat from this starting point.