Establishing Neighborhood Baselines and Tracking Recent Sales?

[Matthew Creel]

Currently reading Anson Young's book and I really like the idea/process of focusing on and farming a particular area.  I want to begin as he suggests by establishing a baseline for a neighborhood or zip code.  Whats your favorite way to accomplish this?  And does anyone track sales in their farm area?  If so, what info do you like to track? And in what format? Excel or some other software?

Thanks ahead of time for the help!