We won't hand you a trajectory, because nobody can honestly promise one. What decides it is supply and demand, capped by what buyers can genuinely afford. In expensive markets, affordability is often the binding constraint. When it's stretched thin, demand and prices can't run much further, because buyers hit a wall on the monthly payment. That pressure pushes prices sideways or modestly down. Two forces can loosen it: - Rates easing. Even a move from an elevated level to a more moderate one meaningfully improves affordability and can revive demand. - More supply. In a place like South Orange County, supply tends to stay tight because many owners are sitting on low locked-in payments and have no reason to sell. Thin supply is a big part of why a market like this rarely falls apart even when demand cools. The realistic "new normal" to plan around is the possibility of a stretch of roughly flat prices until affordability improves, most likely through rates, rather than either a crash or a boom. Anyone promising you a specific decline figure is overselling their crystal ball. The practical move is to make sure a home works for you at today's payment instead of on a bet about where prices or rates head next. If you want to run your actual numbers, that's what the free Roadmap conversation is for: about 20 minutes where we run them with you.