How to analyze a rental market?

[Account Closed]

Hi everyone! Been lurking here for a couple weeks and am starting to post today. Great site with tons of resources.

I'm a recent college grad planning to buy a home in the suburbs outside Philadelphia within 1-2 years. It's about a 30-40 minute drive from the city, and public transportation is also available. My wife and I are also interested in real estate investing, specifically buy/hold/rent strategy. We wanted to buy a duplex to live in one unit and rent the other (as often recommended for new investors), but we're not sure whether the area we're intersted in has a strong demand for rentals or not.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to analyze whether an area is good for rentals?

Thanks for reading!

[Jassem A.]

I usually look at Hotpads, Zillow, Craigslist, etc to see how much properties are listed for on average in the areas I'm looking and then I will expect that I can rent a property for that much or 100-200 less.  Demand is important I suppose but once you find a long term tenant, demand is less of a factor.