I read a statistic that about 30% of people in usa rent, which seems very high.

It will cash flow $1200 a month after renovationsNever going to happen based on industry statistics.

Some great sites to research would include Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census.gov, Texas A&M Real Estate Center, IRR.com and Reis Reports.  

A crazy statistic that I threw at my kids is that the average amount of money in an Americans savings account is less than $5000!

I saw a frightening statistic that 63% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 

As a company grows, the distance between you and the owner gets larger and larger and the customer moves from being a person to being a statistic.  

I'm not sure if it'll help you or not, but I started tracking rent statistics all of indiana recently, I don't have a huge amount of data yet, but it may help you in estimating average rents you may be able to get... www.rent-stats.com

I love statistics and based on numbers alone, there simply is no indication of a coming slowdown anytime soon.  

You may want to also pull out statistics in project cancellation/project shutdown due among other things, State induced strict compliance to the letter, contractor's compliance and liability costs (biggest reason why significant California contractors are put out of business aside from tight competition), it's just next to impossible to earn contractor wages based on economic conditions (that being current prevailing economic depressed consumer wages cannot support re-construction costs or that wages to property modification ratios is not sustainable in long term basis), indicators, and indices (unit labor ratios, material integrity and application ratios, Local, State, and Federal (labor, occupational hazard, environmental) compliance costs, and certain and uncertain risk factors.

National Fire Statistics "Sprinkler systems have been designed to reduce the numbers of fatalities, injuries, and property damage resulting from structure fires.