What tools to use for researching markets

[Jake Rauch]

Hi what tools, websites do you use to decide on market to invest in? Where to get the most recent and accurate data for things like:

• Unemployment data
• Population growth
• Job diversity and top employers in the area
• Vacancy rates (eg huduser.org)
• Property taxes and jnsurance costs

I saw bp pro and reventure and a bunch of other websites provide some of this data, but i wonder how accurate and recent it is. Is one better over the other or do you just get the data from the source directly (gov pages)?

Thanks,

Jake