Rent, don't buy, not for looking a next housing crisis to get into the market. 2008 housing crisis is once in a life time event because it was bad everywhere. Historically, we have had real estate market downturn, but they were mostly regional and the scale is not as severe as 2008.
As for where to put your money, I would still do 70% index fund / 20% international fun / 10% stocks. You can adjust your allocation based on your risk tolerance. One thing that you need to pay attention to is that the equity market is at or near all time high. You need to find some entry points to get in, 10% pullback from S&P 500 should be a good entry point. For international funds, you can buy them right now since they have been performing well for the past year, but they have been lagging behind US markets for the past several years.
Good luck.