I'm wondering from people who are currently doing this in the area, what the occupancy trends look like right now?

Personally I try to shoot somewhere in the middle and also I'm looking at other factors like how well do I know the area, what's been the trend for that neighborhood, how many active homes for sale, what price are investors typically buying at in that area, etc.

Here are some popular metrics to considerPopulation growth (5 yr trend)Unemployment rate (5 yr trend)Diversity of job market (no one industry accounting for 25% of employment)Supply/Demand (vacancy rate, absorption rate, etc)Tenant vs Landlord friendly stateYou can find a lot of this information at factfinder.census.gov or by simple google search.  

Trending topics has an amazing post about house hacking, well wroth the read and may help you accomplish getting an investment property and your wife out of an apartment. maybe buying a duplex and live in one side and rent the other.

In the meantime, go to Forums (bottom left gives you options for Forums, Alerts, Inbox, Blog, More)Along the top it gives the options for Newest, Trending, Browse, Following, etc.)

So the market is still trending up for us but slower.

I felt pretty certain the property will be worth than $1M by 2021, given the history trend, I also thought it’ll very likely get there earlier, but I didn’t know it could get there so quickly.The property is valued at more than $1.4M in 2018, according to Zillow estimate, and based on multiple similar properties sold in the area.

@David Daniels , @Ned Carey ,From their website:"Realist® from CoreLogic® is a public-record database that seamlessly integrates with any web-based multiple listing service (MLS) system to provide in-depth property and ownership data, market information, street and aerial maps, as well as market trends to its users" - www.corelogic.com/products/realistI have MLS access in quite a few cities around the Country, and the trend is to use Realist on the back end as the "tax" database.

PS I am not familiar with your local market trends simply stating based on my experience.

It seems to have been the steady up trend for the past 4 or 5 years and no sign of immediate stop.