The Bureau of Labor statistics is a good source of info.

The concensus so far is that I should write more toward something like Brandon suggested where I can devise a model to forecast future growth and the current state of our real estate market since they want something more academic/statistical/econometric.

There is a statistic somewhere that says a satisfied customer may tell one or two people about his experience, but an unsatisfied customer will tell, on average, NINE people about his bad experience. 

No, mine doesn't work that quick, I keep getting....biggerpockets dot com is not responding;my approach is secret, buy it entails a statistical analysis of probability of the rate of responses between now and the 999,999th post factoring in the rate of change in activity expected as the posts increase.

Is there any way to see a graph or statistic or ???

Many of your friends may be risk averse and would have heard genuine horror stories so make sure you know what you are doing and don;t become another barbeque statistic.

They also give you a small pile of statistics about the market, all good stuff.Of course, we still don't know if this is a good deal.

I wouldn’t reward my own children that I love dearly if they boldly refused to do their chores , so why would I reward adults that I can’t stand if they refused to do their part ?

In researching some of the communities with available properties I've come across a number of statistics. 

Many don’t track this statistic.