Look for properties similar to yours and what they are renting for then formulate your own rent number.. 

I currently just use the MLS and formulate my offers based on the rate of return I want.

The act of writing out our plans helped us to begin formulating more creative strategies for acquiring properties.

My favorite part about creative investing is thinking about all the unique ways to use my skills and my resources to formulate a strategy that works for me. 

You need to begin formulating what really is the advantage of an amount of work, because just the work won't be enough, there has to be a savings to the contractor such as less time spent wasted chasing bids he won't get, things like that, you need to actually save this contractor real money to see a discount, volume is really not going to do it, and I can't stress enough promises of volume are worth even less.Then there is the issue of timing, you're an investor so you're going to be always pressing for right now, any contractor worth a damn is always busy but I'm guessing you're probably going to figure that your 'volume' is going to also mean the contractor should respect your authoratay and be ready to jump when you have the next one.

We are trying to formulate a 5 and 10-year plan with the ultimate goal of becoming self-employed doing REI and investing in our own wealth and future. 

All have valid points and I've formulated a blend of your suggestions. 

(the number of times a home(s) are relisted as an available rental) This is not always an indicator of economic opportunity for investment housing and/or accurate information to formulate market rents.

How should state regulators approach formulating a prudential standard for liquidity, considering a firm’s potential cash outlays for both private label and GSE backed paper?

Browse through those as well, and you'll likely formulate something that will work well for you.With that said, the direct marketing portion of wholesaling can be a lot of fun.