My favorite method for finding the bottom is to take an established (older) first-time home buyer neighborhood which tends to track the SD median and do rent versus own calculations.

Every couple months I do this for houses in Clairemont. Last time I did this was a couple weeks ago. I came up with plenty of examples of houses on the market that (after taxes) are about 300 bucks a month away from being equivalent (on a monthly basis) from renting, assuming 20% down. When this calculation reveals about the same margin with 5% down, that’s when I would be comfortable that the down-side risk is minimized.