The more bookings you get with a particular source, the more reviews you get with that source, and the higher you appear in the search rankings for that source.

just a couple of reasons:No one can buy ALL the deals themselves.Many monetization feeds on a highly ranked site (book sales, pro membership, etc) Trust through notoriety can have a high return on investment (see M.I/oceanpointe for negative example)None of these are good or bad in and of themselves.

Buy lists of owners of properties of the type you might be looking for - multi-family 2 to 4 units, or who would be motivated single family owners:  send direct mail - lots of it.I do a lot of #1 and #3. . . if you have a brand new marketing machine, you need to spend more money on #2, if your machine is 15 years old like mine and your website already ranks, and you want to target your leads to specific properties and areas rather than a blanket ad across the metro, then I spend more money on direct mail and retargeting. 

I used FB and GoogleAds to blow up my REI business until my SEO rankings started generating a lot of free leads.

Generally, only the lower ranking folks stay near base due to prices.

I stumbled across a website that had heat maps and rankings for the cities in terms of most desireable so I was just looking to see if some of those would be confirmed by a local as being correct.

DFW: 7.7% Of Home Sales Were Flips In First Quarter 2018DALLAS (Dallas Morning News) – Dallas-Fort Worth ranked ninth among the cities with the most home purchases and quick resales in first quarter 2018, according to Attom Data Solutions.

I feel all of your posts are either self advertisement or geared toward utilizing BP’s traffic to give your name a higher ranking (SEO Optimization).

The HUD data is easy to find on their FY2018 Fair Market Rents Documentation System and the North Carolina Department of Commerce annual ranking is here: https://www.nccommerce.com/research-publications/incentive-reports/county-tier-designationsI had an interesting PM with @Adam Schneider  about the local (Raleigh) market where we both have investments.

House is a 2007 built (If I recall correctly).See why it is awesome to have a ranking website?