Louis fed has a very popular website that regularly publishes economic data; they also break down certain data sets by state or county.

What's become popular is to house hack properties with a casita/MIL suite.

Again, see what is most popular for lease advertisements in your area and use those.

<----------This is a popular bank here in California under different local names, Bank of the west is one because I see logos everywhere in Bo Ca.China Construction Bank Corporation.Credit Suisse.

See the most popular choices for 2018 on Houzz.  

Contrary to popular belief, this is not set because I believe it will give me a higher return.

From a personal psychological perspective, the moat in flipping seems smaller since it is so popular which means more competition, though this may not be true at the ~$1M price point in CA.MultiFamily/ApartmentsUpsides:BRRRS can make more sense here, since I could use a property manager to manage the propertyCan purchase larger units outside of CA and the deal sizes can be large enough to be worth my time (as opposed to being limited to single family flips in bay area)More options for financing given underlying cash flow ?

@Alina Trigub thank you :) yes syndication does seem popular and understandably it has a lot of benefits.

Spend an afternoon, learn simple investing (low cost indexing is popular), money management, budgeting system, credit scoring and banking options.

@Ken Keati Quickbooks is pretty popular here as accounting software especially, for multiple properties.