July 2025 · Affordability · 3 min read · by Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®
The biggest pandemic boomtowns are giving back gains. The pattern is clean: the markets that ran furthest from fundamentals are the ones cooling now.
Corrections in housing are rarely national. They are concentrated in the places that overshot — and by mid-2025, those places are easy to name.
Austin is the poster child: after doubling in the boom, it has spent two years working off the excess, with values down meaningfully from their peak. Pockets of Idaho, Arizona, Texas, and Florida tell similar stories — the metros that drew the most pandemic migration and built the most are now the ones absorbing the most softness.
Measured against each market’s own pre-pandemic price-to-income norm, the corrected metros are visibly closing their gap — overvaluation narrowing as prices and incomes converge again. That’s healthy, even if it stings recent buyers.
The lesson generalizes: the size of a market’s run-up is the best predictor of its vulnerability. When you’re weighing a hot market, the “Over / Undervalued” read matters more than the headline growth rate.
Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®, serving Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha, and Walworth counties). Email: [email protected] · Phone: (618) 713-2964.
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Home values and rents are Zillow ZHVI/ZORI estimates for the named area, as of 2026-07-03; incomes and population are U.S. Census (SAIPE, Population Estimates); migration is IRS Statistics of Income. Area-level statistical estimates for information only — not an appraisal, and not financial, legal, or tax advice.