That's great Rich.I am seeing building coming back ins some areas and the foreclosures and short sale are decreasing in volume.What is the payoff when you build new per house??

Maybe it is ranking which cities will have the highest number of foreclosures, and respectively the current decrease in appreciation?

I know that any time you are learning you are not wasting time, but my real question is, are there any indicators (Job growth, population increases or decreases, properties sold in the past year) that could help me with choosing an area to work in.

You will be upside down in most cases, so it's likely to be a loosing proposition if you're looking to do buy and hold.You can go into places in the high desert area to find deals, but also the quality of the clientelle will decrease accordingly.

As they slow their spending, demand for products decreases and businesses cut production and lay employees off.

my first strategy was to get 10 single family houses in 10 yearsthen I found out that was way too easy from a transaction standpoint, and I realized that going over 10 houses started to decrease the efficiency of money versus the effort I had to put in the transaction so I bought a 24 unit C class, realized that it was WAY too small, the debt efficiency was too low, and tenant quality created problems I didn't want so I bought a 52 unit B class, and that was much better but going forward I'm looking for much bigger properties and higher quality tenant base. ~200 units A class would be ideal - highly efficient use of capital and debt, inherently low risk, and higher likelihood of appreciation. 

It's a bit more time consuming, sure, but using real numbers decreases the fumble factor a bit. 

This would decrease your monthly payment amount or increase how much of your monthly payment goes towards your principal balance.

I have not seen a decrease in demand for my multifamily rentals here in Columbus, Ohio

You actually DECREASE your Debt/Income.