The Fed will do WHATEVER it takes to prevent house price deflation. They've already shown this during the Financial Crisis. Too much of the economy and financial system is based on house prices, there's no way that they can ever afford to see house prices decline in our lifetime.

They will do whatever it takes to prevent asset price deflation in general. The last thing politicians want is people watching their 401k values go down, and they certainly want them to go up.

As far as I’m concerned, VTI is a better inflation protected security than TIPS for any 3+ year investment horizon.

At this point I'll take stagnating housing prices.

same here. Interest rates are going up so there is some hope.

You can still buy a cheap fixer upper in Detroit.

Funny you say that, I live near Detroit. I'd argue that the cheap fixer upper is seeing price inflation as well.