According to Pew, "investors bought 24% of all single-family houses sold nationwide last year, up from 15% to 16% annually going back to 2012, according to a Stateline analysis of data provided by CoreLogic, a California-based data analytics firm.

The most important qualities are sales ability, being uncomfortable (when marketing), being analytical, and being ethical.Its a sales job at the end of the day, so its great when its great.  

In my opinion, if the numbers/analytics and cash on cash on subject properties are desirable for your criteria, it does not matter what phase of the market we are in to buy/not buy.

Get analytics for your target area.

So I'm curious how and where I would assess demographics/analytics, and what demographics/analytics to consider.

You are going to also need to create a Google Analytics account plus Facebook business page account so you can do online ads and retargetting. 

@Matthew BeharrysinghIf you want to invest the time you can really dig into the analytics of those zip codes and discover potential targets.1.

Just my opinion backed by zero analytics but more of a hunch.

You might want to automate the analytics and have a team to send you deals that are on/ off market to reduce the time you spend searching for deals.

Also Homeaway has been doing major improvements to add things like Analytical tools for free that Airbnb just does not have and Airdna charges for.