That is the shape of housing market corrections. Housing prices are sticky because of a range of financial and emotional reasons. Because of this prices hardly ever crash outright. What happens instead are periods of price stagnation while inflation does the work of reducing real prices. And a real collapse of prices indicates neither wages nor financial devices could support the market any longer.

Affordable is a different issue. Housing assets exhibit strong depreciation under normal circumstances and extreme depreciation under any kind of stress. Affordable houses are used houses in a way similar to how used cars are fundamentally more affordable than cheap new cars.