Becoming acquainted with rental data through heatmaps

[Matt Donley]

I'm curious what is currently available out there for visualizing rental property trends in a given area by heat map in order to become more familiar with average rental rates and property values? I know there are things like Zillow research, but upon first glance it only focuses on major cities, and it's hard to extrapolate the data into something meaningful.

I was looking more for something that displays a heat map. So you see a map of your area, and you can see which parts of the neighborhood rent at a higher price, for instance, or sell at a higher price. There is a lot of data you could display in a heatmap that would really provide a lot of value and help you identify potential deals more confidently. Not sure if there is a service out there like this already?

Otherwise, I was thinking of even hiring a VA to record local data for me once a week, and put it in a database. I know Google Maps has an API where you can generate a heat map, I'm also looking at some other options. Has anyone done something like this before? (Sample heatmap below)