HUD Website Documents

[Robert Kirkley]

Hello everyone!  

I was reading lots of blogs on BP about landlording and rental properties being that I would like to invest in buy and hold properties eventually.  One of the blogs I read contained a hyperlink to this website (https://www.hud.gov/groups/landlords).  That hyperlink led me to many others... it turned out to be a long day of reading! I ended up printing out some documents from different pages of the website, including the Fair Market Rents for Florida (my state), the Housing Market Indicators Monthly Update, and the Housing Market Profiles.  The latter two of the printed documents contain a lot of economic information and charts on the local markets of the area I am trying to learn more about to invest in.  I had a few questions pertaining to these documents:

Are these a good resource to use for my local areas of interest or should I rely on another source of information?

What type of information should I be looking for within these documents? (specific number or charts?)

Does everyone read these or will the documents not give me the information that I need to learn more about buy and hold investing?

Are there any other documents that I should be downloading/printing from this website to use in identifying potential areas to invest in?

I want to thank you in advanced for answering some of these questions.  I will be reading these documents over more in depth soon, but I just wanted to know if I should be looking somewhere else or for more information from this website.  I am actually very happy now to have found the Fair Market Rent values of Florida because now I can at least have a loose idea of what the average rents are like in areas I am not as familiar with.  My goal starting out was to learn something new and talk with one person in the BP community every day and it has already led me farther than I thought it would, so thank you all!  I am looking forward to seeing what your opinions are, have a great rest of the day!