How do future demographic projections affect your buy and hold decisions?

[Cal C.]

Right now as you may know, Atlanta, my home market, is saturated with institutional investors. It is very difficult to buy anything below retail price that doesn't have serious issues.

With that in mind, Josh Sterling's podcast and several threads from other investors I've been reading describe how they have succeeded in markets where they can buy houses below $50K (and even lower) and rent them to professionals. I find these ideas very intriguing as I look for a new place to invest, but invariably (please correct me if I'm wrong) these investors are based in cities that are slowly dying and are projected to continue to do so. Yes there will be some occasional upticks, but if you look at the long term trends driving people away they are still there and have little chance of changing.

That makes me very hesitant to commit to the long term in these places. I really consider buy and hold investing something to do for at least a ten year period and I don't want to place my money where rents and house prices are going to be stagnant at best.

I'm curious how others feel about this dilemma?