New member - targeting Pittsburgh, Central/Northern NJ or Detroit!

[Phil Novack]

Hello BP - nice to meet everyone! I've spent the last couple months in education phase, reading RDPD, Keller's Millionaire Real Estate Investor, many blogs, and I'm now reading J Scott's 123Flip cover-to-cover. In fact my wife and I both currently work in tech careers in San Francisco and J's story is a huge inspiration to us.

Oh yeah, I've also listened to 22 of the 32 BP podcasts, in order, over the past 4-5 weeks whenever I get a chance (I probably could recite the podcast intro and outro in my sleep :).

Anyhow, like J and his wife, my wife and I are both from back east (she's from Pittsburgh, I'm from Detroit), we just got married and we have a plan to spend a few more months in the Bay Area to shore up our startup capital before making the move back east to start a fix and flip and (and eventually buy and hold) business.

I would love to get everyone's insight on the 3 markets we're considering settling and investing in -- as you can see each has its plusses and minuses but for us they all have to be weighed against the business opportunity:

Our likely 1st choice: Pittsburgh -- prices here seem to be in the range we'd be looking for (average home price just over $100K, so our target purchase range would be $30-60K, with rehabs running about the same, though my numbers could be way off...); additionally there seems to be a good rental market here. AND: my wife's family is here and we would have a good network to help us get started.

2nd choice: Northern or Central NJ -- many of our closest friends live in the NY/NJ/Philly area, I spent 7 years living in NJ and the proximity of NYC makes NJ a really attractive place for us to live. It's just: I don't know if it is a good place to INVEST. Given our starting position I'd like to aim for the #s mentioned above in Pittsburgh, and I don't know if this is realistic in NJ.

3rd choice: Detroit -- my family is here, and we would have a great network, including friends and family who are contractors that we could potentially work with. Numbers similar to Pittsburgh (I think), but not as strong rental market (I think). The caveat on this choice is I loved growing up in Detroit (Warren, specifically) but neither my wife nor I have a huge desire to live there at this time.

I would be very grateful for any insight from the community -- thank you!
Phil