Atlanta the best sub-$100k Single Family Cashflow Market?

[Rob Barry]

So I've saved up some cash, currently am living internationally, and am eager to start building a small portfolio. My strategy will be to rehab distressed sub $100k homes (target average: $75k bought and rehabbed with $1k ish rents) and cashflow them. Most likely I'd go for single families with some multis mixed in as the working capital grows. But I want to focus on one city so I can find one team to run everything. 

Right now I've been looking into Atlanta, and it seems like an ideal city to focus on; decent-sized rents, solid growth, jobs to go around (correct me if I'm wrong). There seems to be a ton of inventory out there, which is great because I want to stack them fast once I get going.

So I have three questions:

1) Would you recommend any other markets to look at that could give me what I'm looking for?

2) How do you think Atlanta looks now? Am I late to the punch? I know it was all the rage in 2013...

3) I'm new at this, so I'd be grateful for any non-obvious tips on how you would assess a city's investment viability and what you'd look out for in the research stage I'm in.

[John Ford]

Well, the Beltline is huge. It's now a household name among people who live intown. Well, it is to those who live along the sections that have been completed. Many who live along the unfinished/unstarted sections still have no idea about it or how major it's going to be (which is a great thing, as an investor!) but it's easily the most transformative project in the city in decades. 
It's being completed in phases. Some phases are already completed (paved, parks built, no transit yet) The phase that's being worked on (graded and paved) right now is the Southwest area. 
The first phase completed was subarea 6, which runs through Old Fourth Ward, as well as several A/B neighborhoods. A couple of decades ago, O4W was solidly a D-class war zone. By the time the Beltline got started in earnest, it was a C neighborhood. Now, it's a solid A and one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city, most of it being driven by the development along the Beltline. I own a house in O4W and rode that wave with great success.
Now I own a house is Westview. I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't think the Beltline will be as dramatically transformative but I still think it will be huge for the area. O4W benefitted by being bordered by Midtown, Poncey Highlands, and Inman Park, three already hot neighborhoods. So when developers started building in O4W, it was natural for people to migrate across the invisible borders and O4W became just another part of that class A cluster.
There are already huge redevelopments planned on the south/southwest Beltline. The Murphy Crossing development near Adair park might not be as splashy as Ponce City Market, but I think it'll be close. Monday Night Brewing has already announced a new brewery and beer garden adjacent the Beltline in a warehouse district redevelopment in the West End. These projects are pivotal because they will give people destinations on the Beltline to travel to. Heck, I'm already looking forward to hopping on my bike and riding over for a beer and hardly having to touch a city street.
Once there are destinations, and more and more people begin to use the Beltline, if it's anything like what happened in are 6, it will take on a life of its own. 
The housing stock on the west side is also fantastic. Many of the historic homes rival the homes found in historic class A neighborhoods like Virginia Highlands (just without the meticulous maintenance and upkeep, but they're mostly repairable). Ultimately, I think the West/Southwest neighborhoods will see an influx of young families similar to what's happened in neighborhoods like Oakhurst and East Lake, which have done fantastic and are now out of the price range of many young families who want to live in-town. And the Southwest/West Beltline neighborhoods are far more convenient to get into and out of by car than those neighborhoods, most being connected to either I-20 or I-75/85. All in all, I'm bullish on the whole are. The big appreciation might be 10 or more years out (it took me 11 years to see any real appreciation in O4W, then it all just exploded over about 18 months) but it's just a matter of time. I'm super bullish on properties that will cashflow now and can also be mined for major appreciation capture over the next decade or so.
Ha, anyway, that's my Beltline primer. I could be wrong, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is.