Historical Rent / Price Data - Where to Find?

[Mark Woodworth]

I know this has been asked in different variations before but wanted to see if perhaps the landscape has changed. As far as I'm aware, most people use some combination of Craigslist, Zillow, and Rentometer as first pass before performing a more detailed analysis.  Are there other sources that are particular well known for reliable / granular data? Paid or otherwise? The devil is in the details and it's tough to accurately reflect nuance related to things like property age, school district zoning, footprint, number of beds, curb appeal etc - what I'm looking for is more or less a way to filter a list of desirable markets based price/rent ratios on a current but also historic basis.  Zillow has good history data but it's rental set lumps single and multifamily together, and it's just one number - no way to distinguish a property's characteristics.  Rentometer looks potentially better since the paid version allows you to add property details and separate single vs multifamily, but it's tough to know how accurate it is without spending serious time testing it.. maybe others have?

A related question on deal sourcing: how do others do it? Running the numbers once you have a property in mind is straight-forward, but finding which markets are even worth evaluating is a whole other thing.  It's not practical to look at every market by hand without some sort of coarse filter, so I'm curious to hear how others find deals which fit their parameters.  In this particular economic environment with prices sky high and rates where they are, it seems exceedingly difficult to, for example, find a property that would meet the "50%" rule unless you're playing in the mud somewhere like Detroit.  What sort of tools do you all use to assist your efforts?