Still, what to do when you know that something is going to happen.

From my perspective, that ship (real estate market) has hit an iceberg, and there aren't any life boats.

The trouble is that it will take 10 years to sink!

Soon, defaults will make smaller banks fold.
And this will lead to larger banks folding.
And on up the chain...

... however, the biggest banks will probably have enough liquidity given to them (QE, bail-outs and bail-ins) that they will stay and try to suck up all the cheap paper.

Home mortgages will become far rarer, and this will mean a huge drop in the house prices.
It may be that house prices equal what a person is able to pay cash for.

Along with this, we are in the beginning of an ice-age.
Soon you will have an energy efficient, passive solar heated house or freeze to death.

Cities will soon look like detroit.
Suburbs will become old-folks homes.
People are either going to move to rural places and start a homestead, or they are going to become homeless conglomerating around rotting city centers.

Again, this is a slow trainwreck coming.

So, from my perspective, getting into rental property will be a short term business strategy.

Maybe getting into building earth ships?