In PA, cities are ranked by population into classes.  

My recommendation is to choose cities in safe and economically diversified areas with above-average income and population growth.

The only reason I ask is here in CT our MLS automatically populates the square footage based on the town records, but it does give you the option of manually changing the square footage with the owner being listed as the source of the square footage number as opposed to the town records.So in your example the MLS would read either "Sq Ft 1400/town records" or Sq ft 1600/Owner".

Or is it like with most all the big bucks to be made in densest populations, hi-tech high risers and megacities is where society is moving towards not away??

The dilemma is it is located in a small town with less than 3000 people in the population, 20 minutes drive to next large city.

If it's a densely populated are and people want to live there, they will keep revitalizing (or gentrifying) older homes.  

I just say that as a broad based statement.. but I look at some of the actors in TExas for instance preying on the non English speaking Hispanic populations.. and its gross profiteering..  

Despite this wide-spread and on-going use around the world, two countries that comprise over half the world's population, there are only 107,000 deaths attributed to asbestos each year.

Short of that, the census is a good place to start for median income, household size, population change, ect. best places.net is also a good source for more real estate specific data.Lastly, I use cached zillow ads to track the changed in rent. 

I'm in a small(75,000 Population) market in northwest alabama.