As for holding your breath I suppose it depends where a person is in the buy-hold-sell decision. The only people who should be sweating are the people who have exposure to losses. At the moment that includes thousands of 2004 and 2005 buyers and anyone who has maxed out their mortgage ATM in the last couple years. Of these people, some are actually smart enough to see how precarious their situations are (hence are sweating); while the others are too dumb to realize how bad their situation already is.
People who currently have no skin in the game have no rational reason to not continue to wait. The market is going down, and the decline isn’t that slow. There is no 3-year financial upside to getting in at the moment. If you want to preach the emotional benefits of owning the right to win or lose in the property ladder game then feel free. However, I think your message would be better received on one of the investor/flipper boards out there. Those guys love soft-landing predictions.