Historical rents and property appreciation rates, over long term?

[Ryan Hebert]

Obviously, the person to come up with a calculator to estimate "the market" to perfection will have discovered the golden ticket and would never give it away for free! But for the rest of us, there must be useful approximation techniques to understanding the local real estate markets.

I come primarily from the conventional stock and bond portfolio world, where historical dividend yield rates and price appreciation rates are common knowledge for various segments of the market: S&P 500 for domestic large cap, FTSE ex-US for international, Barclays for bonds, etc. I like to be informed of the long run of the market before jumping in, and I hope to bring that philosophy into real estate.

How granular can the data get, say for the metropolitan area level, for metrics such as inflation-adjusted rent (for 1 br? 2 br? 3 br?) over the past 30+ years? Property value appreciation rate (for 1 br? 2 br? 3 br? Single family? Multi-family?) over the past 30+ years? Population rates (people moving in or moving out)? What about at the county level? Or the municipal level?

I am most interested in looking at various markets and comparing these rates. Is this a fool's errand? I know Zillow's metrics are not widely lauded for their accuracy. So for the data-driven in you, using what sources do you look to find long term real estate data to estimate appreciation and rent?