Choosing an Out of State Market to Invest

[Eric B.]

How do you decide on choosing a market when your first starting out and doing long distance real estate investing?  

I'm in the military and am currently stationed overseas.  I just finished David Greene's book, "Long-Distance Real Estate Investing," and feel like it gives a good foundation for how to get started doing everything but choosing a market.  I've asked around and read the forums for specific advice on how people do this, but so far have only really found generic advice.  Even podcast guests seem to speak the same generic advice.

• Invest where you have friends/family
• Invest where you used to live
• Invest in a market you know
• Invest where jobs are growing, the economy is doing well, or where there is good growth potential.

This is the essence of the advice I've received.  The last bit of advice is the most helpful but I struggle with coming up with the information unless I go from city to city and pull local data.  How do the big time investors like David Greene, Brandon Turner, and others choose on a market to begin their search? How do they narrow down the list of cities/metropolitan areas to a manageable one to begin their due diligence?  

I've found sites like, Rent Data, City-Data, and GDP by State which all give results from data from 2017/2018 and older.  They don't help with predicting future growth.  

So far my strategy is analogous to throwing darts at a map and looking into whatever city they hit.  I don't want to get lucky, I want to figure out a repeatable process that works so I can invest across the country with confidence.  

Am I making this process too difficult?  What do you all do to choose a new out of state market?