How to decide what city to do your first house hack

[Mitch Walker]

Good morning to all,

I'm a traveling operating room nurse from FL originally...my girlfriend and I plan to make a perm location somewhere in the greater south/southeast. Possibly, Savannah, Charleston, NWF (If I can convince her). Question is this. I browse zillow, redfin, realtor.com, etc. to see how many listings and how big a market is. I LOVE the idea of our first property/home (first time homeowners for us also....likely to be in 2024, market depending). However, I want to then begin the journey of transitioning from healthcare into real estate (not a quick transition I know), but while we love smaller, more charming, charismatic cities, I am curious if they'd be too small for investing. Would we be better off in say Tampa, suburbs of Atlanta, or outskirts of a Nashville/Knoxville, or Birmingham like location? I/we don't want to be in huge cities (we're early 40s and value quality of life vs crazy traffic), but want to be proximate to options and accessibility. To summarize, how do we decide what is the better option....smaller town we'd love, or something slightly bigger. I also like the FHA 3.5% down approach

Thanks so much everyone.