Which market? and how to find best deal for cash flow, appreciation, good tenants

[Annette Barnett]

My situation:  Single family home under contract - closes Sept 7th (26 days), doing 1031 exchange, will have $275K-ish, wanting to move into multifamily.

Quandary - I want to buy in a strong market, have great cash flow, appreciation, get a larger building/more units for greater appreciation and mortgage pay down, etc., but the larger the building/more units - the less the cash flow, as it requires a larger mortgage, which means more of the money to pay for the property has an interest rate on top of it, eating into cash flow.  I am at a time in my life, after a career change, that I need more cash flow, but would prefer not to compromise the equity built from larger mortgage pay down and greater appreciation on a larger building/more units.  I've also primarily been looking in Raleigh, Charlotte (not finding much), Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio (Texas - high property taxes obviously) and a little in Phoenix, but have heard it's overpriced/saturated.

I'm open to other markets!  Have tried to stick with larger cities to be safe, cuz I'm not well educated about smaller markets.  

Any advice on how to find the best combination of more units/larger building, cash flow, appreciation, mortgage pay down, etc? without endless searching? (which I'm willing to do if needed, but I'm a big believer in magnetizing/manifesting things over efforting).

Thank you