The eighteen percent mortgages of 1980. The crash of 1987. The early-90s recession. What every one of them had in common.
May 2026 · Anita Rich
I was licensed in California in 1980, when mortgage rates were around eighteen percent and everyone I knew said real estate was finished. It was not. It has never once been finished. It has been slow, it has been brutal, and it has been irrational — but people keep needing somewhere to live.
Sellers anchor to the last peak and spend a season learning they cannot have it. Buyers wait for a bottom they can only identify in hindsight. Both groups make their worst decisions in the six months after a turn, when the old number is still in everyone's head and the new one has not been admitted yet.
If you are selling, the market you are in is the one from the last sixty days, not the one you remember. If you are buying, the moment everyone agrees it is safe is the moment your competition returns.
Neither of those is advice to rush. It is advice to price and offer against what is true right now, which is the only thing I can actually show you.
Written by Anita Rich, licensed in California since 1980 and a broker since 2004. If you want this read applied to your own address, ask.
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