Out of State Investing - How best to avoid analysis paralysis?

[Billy San Roman]

Aloha Everyone thanks in advance for reading. I have decided to move forward with my interest in REI and want to explore out of state options. The first logical step for me was to analyze markets and then choose one before networking and building a team in that area. I very quickly found myself with multiple articles on different markets with more stats then I could imagine. Recently I found some great sources and am now printing Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis's for each area I would like to explore. Still, I find myself with an enormous amount of information and not quite sure what data would be best to influence my decisions.

My question: Whether or not you invest out of state or have experience with market analysis, what are the top factors that you look for to influence your decision? Any advice or insight that you can share regarding this would be greatly appreciated as I can see myself going down a rabbit hole analyzing markets until the end of time without some additional insight from experienced investors as to what is most important to look for and then go from there. 

Mahalo for your reply!

[John Olson]

Billy, congrats on this first step.  In my out of state deal, I looked for a city with population growth, job growth, low crime, and low rehab costs. As an urban planner in my day job, I am also big on cities that are heavily reinvesting into their downtowns.  If you're a long-term investor, I recommend reading up on neighborhood master plans and redevelopment plans that are usually posted on city websites.  Not only will these documents give you a heads up on some of your market analysis, but they will tell you where a lot of public/private investment will occur in the future.