Tools to pick markets for investments

[Carnet Williams]

Greetings,

I seem to see this question come up a bunch: What out of state market should I invest in? The prevailing answer seems to be invest near where you live (or have connections such as family) to begin with. For many people like myself that doesn't work (I live in CA) well. So the questions are:

1) Are there any tools/service out there that help you filter out certain criteria and rank cities that match (e.g. growing population). BP has tools to analyze properties (along with Dealcheck), but are there tools to analyze markets?

2) I have been analyzing market based on my own personal criteria. 

- Growing population

- Diversity of industries (particularly like technology)

- Sunbelt when possible

- University population

What are some criteria that you use to analyze markets? I promise to summarize all your answers into one post at the end so we can all crowdsource ideas.