Everything in you says wait for the crowd to come back.
Working across property markets nationally, this is one of the most common misreads buyers make when conditions cool.
Think about a brand you already trust running a genuine discount. The lower price doesn't make you question the brand. If anything, it reads as a better moment to buy, because your view of the quality hasn't changed. Only the price has.
Property asks you to apply the same logic, and it's the one place most people drop it. Most people will openly agree property is a stable, long-term asset, whether they hold it as an owner occupier or an investor. But the moment sentiment turns and a market goes quiet, that belief gets quietly abandoned. A quality asset in an investment grade location doesn't get worse because fewer people happen to be bidding on it this quarter. It just reads that way.
Cyclical softness vs structural softness
"Soft" gets used to describe two very different situations, and they call for opposite responses.
Sometimes it's cyclical. The fundamentals underneath the location haven't moved. Employment base is still diverse, population is still growing, incoming supply is still tight or getting tighter. What's shifted is sentiment. Buyers have gone cautious, competition has thinned, and yields have improved simply because prices stopped keeping pace with rents.
Sometimes it's structural. Something underneath has actually deteriorated. Employment base has narrowed, population growth has stalled, vacancy is climbing because supply is outrunning demand. Here the market isn't offering a discount at all. It's pricing in a genuinely weaker future.