USA Macro Market Analysis - Comments welcome!

[Henry Murray]

Hi BP!

I'm a newbe who lives in California and I've been spending the last 4-6 months reading everything real estate related that I can, staying up to date on the forums here and listening to all of the BP podcasts that I can. Like everybody knows, CA is really expensive and I'm looking for cashflow over appreciation (and a lower entry price) so I've been trying to decide where in the US I should start looking in more depth.  I wanted to do an objective analysis so I figured out what parameters were most important for a reliable, cash flowing market (Low price/rent, positive population growth or influx, and job growth) tried to quantify them in widely available statistics and put them all together for the major (and some data for minor) metropolitan statistical areas.  

If anyone is interested in taking a look the spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XGAQdAPn-D..., feel free to copy it to excel and sort/filter to help find what is most useful to you. Feedback and comments on my criteria, method, or sources is also welcome!

Sources: Price to Rent and Median Home data is from Zillow Data, population data is from US Census Estimates, and unemployment is from Bureau of Labor Statistics.