Which city for out-of-area investing?

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Hi All,

I'm trying to work through a bit of an academic exercise, and I'd like to re-produce some of the results in the Forbes article, Best Buy Cities: Where To Invest In Housing In 2016.  My question is what are the important criteria an investor should look at to determine what area they should invest in (for a long-term buy-and-hold rental)?  How would you weight these criteria?

Some thoughts based on the article:

• Job growth ( 3.5% is great, 2% is national average)
• Population growth (8% is good, 2% is national average)
• Good median rent/median price ratio 

Which of these is more important than the others.  What would you look at as a signal of a strong market?