Picking a city to invest in

[Account Closed]

Hi All,

I'm trying to work through a bit of an academic exercise, and I'd like to re-produce some of the results in the Forbes article, Best Buy Cities: Where To Invest In Housing In 2016. My question is what are the important criteria an investor should look at to determine what area they should invest in (for a long-term buy-and-hold rental)? How would you weight these criteria?

Some thoughts based on the article:

• Job growth ( 3.5% is great, 2% is national average)
• Population growth (8% is good, 2% is national average)
• Good median rent/median price ratio

Which of these is more important than the others. What would you look at as a signal of a strong market?

Also, this article:

http://www.groco.com/readingroom/estate_planning/c...

suggests the following criteria:

• % renters higher
• A market with low (good) median price/ median rent. Min 1%
• Vacancy rate
• Avg cost of housing < 3x avg income
• Days on market. Want low and decreasing
• asking/sale price. If they’re getting the price they’re asking for, that’s good.
• Low unemployment
• Per capita and median household income rising
• Gdp growth

Any thoughts on which of these is more important and if any are ignorable?