Correlation in property values and rent

[Treivor Cashion]

Ever since I watched "The Big Short" I've been intrigued by the 2007-2008 real estate market crash...and while I know that the crash was caused by loose lending standards combined with ARMs, uninformed borrowers, limited to zero due diligence, mortgage backed securities/CDOs and Wall Street I have yet to wrap my head around one thing. It's very easy to see how a significant drop in property values would destroy development companies, flippers or basically anyone with a short term buy/sell strategy. However, I haven't been able to comprehend how a long term buy/hold investor would be significantly negatively impacted by fluctuations in the market...assuming of course that you have a property with a tenant that passed your screening criteria, you adequately prepared cash reserves for repairs/maintenance and cap ex, bought your property with a fixed mortgage, and essentially took the processes advocated for here on BP, I don't see how a long term buy/hold investor for rental properties would get burned? Except for maybe that the drop in market conditions increases their vacancies because of lost jobs or some macro economic factor of that nature...so I guess in short my question is this: is rent significantly affected by a drop in property value and is it enough of a fluctuation for even a solid buy/hold investor to go under? Thanks for the insight!