I don't have any data to support this, it's just a feeling.Am I totally wrong?

You will find other local investors who can assist you in finding the data you need plus local analysis.  

Look at the consumer confidence data.

I thought I"d play around with some of the data out there to get an idea if I should buy now or later. 

You are the client of your buyers agent, who does not have control over the entering of the data.

With this info you can then skip trace to make contact with the homeowner.I don't trust third party services to aggregate this data.

This is not an anomaly, and even though it has basically been a strong buyers market nonstop since then, data from earlier than that is still consistent in that appreciation does exist here. 

Too see which areas are desireable  for you need to look into population count, unemployment history for the last 20 years and lastly the median income for the area.This is a good suggestion but it might be difficult to obtain all of that data. 

In my experience Zillow is basically useless for data such as taxes and mortgage payment estimate.  

Spent a few months regrouping and getting back to data mining.