This graph might help from CoStar, you can see there's already a reversal happening in rent and value. 

The first one is the hardest, huge mile stone !!!

If I am working with a draw schedule, how would I pay for materials if they are not scheduled to be paid until after certain milestones are complete?

Maybe you'll be a guest on our next "Newbie Podcast" :) That would be awesome and a personal milestone. 

You think throwing graphs and SEO terms in my face scares me?

I believe that STRs are on the upward side of the graph, and not very far up it at this point.

What exactly that graph looks like, I'm not sure.You will likely find that you get more responses from yellow letters, but the percentage of motivated sellers is smaller.  

In celebration of reaching our 100,000 member milestone in the coming week or so (we're less than 500 away as of writing this), we're going to be giving away thousands of dollars in prizes to our users and advocates!

However, I have often entered my email address into a squeeze page to get a report/graph/white paper that I wanted access to read.

If you hire anyone on fiverr - make the project milestone based , if they don't deliver the first - move forward