I would agree that general networking and education help lead you to a market,  but it gets overwhelming in where you turn to collect data from there. 

Interview the agents and get some market data to help you narrow down which market or markets make sense for you.  

As for stocks, putting most into something near-certain (like a time-tested index fund) can be wise, using dollar-cost averaging is smart, and then betting on likely hyper-growth opportunities (e.g., buying oil companies when they crashed a year-and-a-half ago) can work for us.

There are two main tests (only one needs to be passed) in order to qualify as a real estate professional.At least 50% of your time is spent on the real estate business.You (or your spouse) spends a minimum of 750 hours per year with hands-on management of the rental properties and operations.

They might not be able to give you all of the data right away, but should certainly explain the process, such as obtaining a new assessed value based on market price (your purchase price) upon sale of the property.

Realtor.com would be a good second bet since it pulls all MLS data.

So the only change here is how that data is collected. 

Unless you feel that rental is a killer and will stand the stress test of a refi I'd always take cash tax free when I can.

While you shouldn't change qualifications this may be the time to test your pet friendliness if you are willing by accepting pets on a case by case basis. 

We used historical data and countless simulations to test this belief.