How to analyze price to rent ratio on a large (country-wide) scale

[Kurtis Foster]

Hi All,

I've got 3 properties in Southern California that have been appreciation-plays as they essentially net zero cash flow, but they've accumulated significant equity for me. Now I'm looking to move to more of a cash flow portfolio and unfortunately cash flow and California don't go together so I'd like to start looking out of state.

I'd like to analyze zip codes across the country for rent-to-price ratios to narrow down potential areas to invest in, but haven't been able to find a source that has comprehensive data that I can analyze on a large scale. The closest I've found is the Zillow Housing Data page (https://www.zillow.com/researc...) but I have a few issues with the "Rentals" data. 

1) The rental data does not breakdown by property type (SFR, condos, etc.)

2) There are a lot of zip codes that aren't populated with rent prices

The "Home Values" data on the the other hand is very comprehensive as you can pull data for SFR, 1 bd condo, 2 bd condo, etc., and it has way more zip codes populated with prices than the rental data does. Unfortunately having the Home Value data without reliable and comprehensive rentals data doesn't do much good for me.

Does anyone have a resource or a way to pull rents and prices of all zip codes (or at least all cities) across the country without researching them one by one?

Thanks!