The new-normal era — 2023 through 2025 — is the market that exists today. It followed the 2022 bubble burst, and its defining characteristic is that the market reset higher rather than reverting to the pre-bubble baseline. This page covers the new-normal characterization and the year-specific dynamics.
The elevated baseline.
The market reset higher, not back. The ~750–800 deals/year new-normal run rate sits roughly 11% above the pre-bubble baseline — the bubble was a peak, but the demographic supply wave and continued PE deployment hold the new baseline structurally elevated.
The new-normal run rate of approximately 750–800 deals/year compares to 600–700 in the institutional era's mid-period — roughly 11% above the pre-bubble baseline. The reset-higher dynamic is structural: the Silver Tsunami supply pressure and continued PE capital deployment together support a baseline above where the institutional era started. An analyst projecting forward volume anchors on this elevated baseline; the pre-bubble level systematically understates the current market.
Demand soft, multiples held.
The 2023 dynamic was the "defying gravity" pattern: demand softened (the rate shock raised buyer cost of capital) without the multiple compression a normal cycle would produce. The structural reason: the supply-demand imbalance from the demographic wave sustained pricing even as demand cooled. In a normal market, softening demand compresses multiples; in 2023, the structural supply shortage held them up. The pattern validated the seller's-market characterization — even a demand-side cooling could not break the pricing, because the supply side was structurally constrained.
Mega-deals and sustained volume.
2024 was a mega-deal year — large transactions returned as rate stabilization restored buyer forecasting certainty, and the deal-volume recovery firmed. 2025 sustained the elevated run rate, with approximately 695 deals reported through the year. The new-normal era demonstrated the market's resilience: after the rate shock and bubble burst, the market did not collapse to pre-bubble levels but stabilized at an elevated baseline, with multiples re-firming and volume recovering as the macro environment stabilized.
The per-year detail — the annual summaries for 2023, 2024, and 2025 — is published in the dedicated data briefs. The new-normal era page pairs with the pre-modern era and institutional era pages, rolls up into the historical deal volume evolution overview, and connects to the convergence-window analysis in the macroeconomic catalysts Pillar.