Assessing liquidity, ability to rent, etc, of a house prior to buying?

[Victoria Stone]

Hello everyone, 

I have no experience with real estate and will be buying my first home with cash in a few months.  Just in case I end up hating the area or want to move for some reason, I'd like to have an idea of how easy it would be to sell the property or rent it out.  I know real estate is not liquid, but I'm looking for a sense of a property's (or neighborhood's) relative liquidity.  

What are the metrics I'd look at to get an idea? I'm assuming things like how many houses in the neighborhood are sold per month, year, etc, how long they are on the market for on average prior to selling, etc. I'm not sure how to gauge how easy it would be to rent a particular property. Is there some metric for vacancy vs. availability, how many people seek rentals in the area?

I imagine what I'm trying to research has some technical name in real estate parlance...  This must be something that real estate investors consider prior to buying investment properties. I'm hoping someone knowledgeable might be able to point me in the right direction. Thank you!