My best guess is it's a rising interest rates thing. My second-best guess is that something has kicked off in China and it's slowly rippling through the world.
I think they're down about 5% year on year, but after routine gains of 5% - 10% a year, I wouldn't really call that a soft crash. We'll see what happens in the coming months.
Similar trend all over the english-speaking world.
UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull...
Ireland: https://www.daft.ie/report/2018-Q4-houseprice-daft-report.pd...
Canada: https://housepriceindex.ca/#maps=c11
Australia: https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/housing-index
My best guess is it's a rising interest rates thing. My second-best guess is that something has kicked off in China and it's slowly rippling through the world.