A quicker way to determine how to create the sales funnel is to hire a free lance marketer, specializing in lead generation for real estate agents, allow him access to your data, and have him produce the sales funnel process for you.  

I'm trying to find data sources to get information on local rent values per bedroom/square foot, number of rental properties currently available, population demographics showing how many people in a given area rent vs. buy, etc.

Are you stacking those prospects against any other data points (high equity, vacant, non owner occupied, etc)? 

Also, Dave Myer posted a helpful article on this topic showing all the data and that pretty much sealed the deal for me.

It would depend on the market and the data available as to which approach would be the most reliable. 

I am mortgage broker located in Dallas, I also am a buy and hold guy with a small 6 property portfolio spread across Wisconsin and Texas.I went to Alicia Marks meet up and met a lot of cool / friendly people doing a lot of house hacking and STR, so definitely worth attending the next one!

Make sure of all data like are all the rents being paid.

I met a couple building a new home that wasn't lakefront but tertiary with a great view.

They have data on homes that have already rented, you may be leaving money on the table.

Here's some data: https://www.city-data.com/city...Unemployment is only 4% but 25% of the population lives in poverty.