“Home values will stay on much firmer ground if we go into a recession,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, during the group’s December summit. Yun added that buyers who borrow for mortgages today are far more financially secure than a decade ago and that the U.S. is not facing the oversupply of homes that it did in the mid-2000s. Those factors mean that any recession will likely not send the local housing market spiraling — but instead could help cool record-high prices and provide some relief to shoppers.