These manly men fill the sink with hot water and rinse their beard out to soften the hair as much as they can before lathering up with shave cream using a bristle brush to push the beard-softening cream into the base of the hairs.

A good accountant usually can soften this blow by analyzing the situation and doing some IRS-acceptable allocations, like when there is carpet as part of the sale but it's worn out and has no more economic value.There are two ways to defer depreciation recapture: 1031 exchange and monetized installment sale.Maybe another way is with a Qualified Opportunity Zone but I'm not sure -- still learning about those.

But we are experiencing a softening of the market, increasing inventory, increasing DOM.

When the market softens, their investors are going to sell their shares and the business will be forced to sell the assets to cover their investor liquidation.  

It's softening, despite the YoY increase there's deals still be had there you just got to find them.

On the one hand, some people think things are peaking here and that pricing will soften (or worse) and yet this article states that here we are in one of the last affordable markets.

I will only by off market at this time, and am paying off student loan debt and building liquid capital for when the market softens and the math makes sense.

I don't know your market, but since 2021 my local market has softened somewhat.

Prices are already starting to soften at some tiers and in some locations in the Metro. 

I don't know about Portland, but I would agree with the rest of the Denver folks that I don't believe the Denver market will crash but it will likely soften somewhat over the next two years.I thought @Linda Weygant's response was a great one for buy & hold investors - as long as you aren't leveraged to the max and would struggle to make payments if rents took a dip, as a buy & hold investor you should be fine - history shows that housing prices will increase again eventually.And while I don't have data to back this up (maybe someone else does?)