Top Down Property Screening

[Alexander Sobrado]

Hi all,

I'm a fairly inexperienced investor (have owned one property) who now lives in Southern CA where cap rates are very low. Given that there isn't all that much attractive in my immediate area (cap rates are very low), I am more or less location agnostic for my next purchase, and would be willing to fly/drive extended distances if I found property that was attractive enough.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to perform a top-down analysis, filtering out cities with very low cap rates, and then further filtering based on macro-economic data to find markets that I would consider attractive from both a cashflow and appreciation standpoint. I understand this level of granularity may be tough, but has anyone performed this type of analysis before? Are their paid resources that you need to get the right data?

I understand investing locally is (typically) best and that you need to understand the markets you invest in well. This would be a starting point for finding markets I want to spend time learning about. There has to be a better way than just googling "markets with lowest cap rates"....

Thanks,

Alex