Key Macroeconomic Indicators every RE investor should know?

[James R. Copeland]

Buying/selling on emotion is for suckers. With the stock market I have a pretty good idea of what indicators to look at before buying or selling a stock. What's the P/E ratio, how's the earnings per share growth looking, dividend percentage, what's the federal reserve doing? Are big money investors on wall street flooding in or out of a particular sector? All these questions you'll see answered non-stop on CNBC all day every day. But I'm having a harder time figuring out what some good macro indicators are for real estate investors. 

Obviously knowing the mortgage rates comes to mind. It's VERY important (at least it has been for me) to know roughly what interest rate to expect to have for a new mortgage if I were to buy another house right now. It's also nice to have a general sense of which direction those rates are moving. I'm still a bit hazy understanding exactly how an RE investor should shift strategies around those rates, but that's one of the questions I hope to have answered or at least discussed on this thread.

Second goal of this thread though is to ask what are some broader macro and more focused local micro indicators that you, as an investor, use as buying or selling signals? For example, when the stock market has a major decline, do you immediately go buy more homes? Sell more homes? Why? 

Also what are some local microeconomic indicators you use to study areas you're considering buying? Do you look for areas where businesses are moving in? New colleges? New highways/onramps? Transportation hubs? What makes you rush in and what makes you run out?

Hope that wasn't too many questions for one topic, but if one question jumps out at you more than the others feel free to just address one. Would love to get some of y'alls thoughts on this subject as I've been scratching my head about it a lot lately!