Any reasonable landlord/real estate investor will have planned for various results - if your rental empire depends on "rents go up" and can't handle a flat market, let alone a downturn, you're going to be in for a bad time.
A stable market is great; as you can find good deals with some sort of certainty, and focus on where you can actually build value (rehab, etc).
If you are smart, you throttle up investments just before a boom starts and throttle them back just before a boom ends. At least you try to up your margins during good times so you can survive bad times. The trick is keeping your talent employed during the bad times so they are trained up and still in the industry for good times. Stability is obviously preferable.