The pace of job growth in July was unchanged from the 1.7 percent annual rate of previous months, but the details suggest an economy that will do modestly better for the rest of the year. Most importantly, jobs in business services were up 3.5 percent from last year.
Business services is one of the largest sectors of the economy, on a par with health care and government, and bigger than retail or manufacturing. Earlier this year it was growing at a 3 percent rate, in the last few months around 3.5 percent; it seems only a small increase but it means that businesses are expanding again.
While buying single family rental properties has become the darling investment strategy of Wall Street, it may not always make sense for individual real estate investors — particularly in some markets already picked over by the large institutional investors. But there are still markets where the numbers work for the conservative, individual investor looking to purchase foreclosures and other homes as 
California Foreclosure Statistics
Demand for U.S. real estate by foreign investors has exploded over the last year. The first reason has been the weakness of the U.S. dollar. That has allowed foreign buyers to invest in U.S. real estate that produces favorably high yields, as well as profiting from the currency trade. These two factors compound to give foreign investors greater returns.