@Al Williamson Al, thanks for your reply. You brought up a very good point. I asked for "best markets anywhere in the country" more as a starting point. Of course, I do have some personal preferences as to where I do or do not want to live, but then I am a bit flexible too. For example, I have been really wanting to live in Oregon (or the northwest in general, which would also include Montana or Idaho), but the RE markets there don't seem very conducive for cash flow (especially Oregon). Whereas places in the midwest like Indianapolis or Kansas City (I see these two names constantly come up in BP forum discussions along with some others in the same region) would not have been my first choice to live at, but if they are much better prospects for making money, I could consider moving there. I hope you get the idea. One of the places I have always liked is Colorado, and Colorado Springs is one of the top contenders in my list (perhaps Fort Collins too, but prices are already very high in FC and it's relatively smaller, so CS probably wins over FC).
Thanks again for your thoughtful post. This brings up the questions I was going to ask anyway:
1. How is the market in Colorado Springs? I see the prices are still relatively lower than other cities in Colorado. Do anybody on this forum invest in CS? What is the cash flow like?
2. In general, I would prefer a place with some natural beauty (like hills, green, etc.) and with an open-minded, educated and somewhat diverse population (doesn't have to be nearly as diverse as California or New York or Chicago, just to clarify), and that still doesn't feel like a big city and is not too crowded. So if anybody has any suggestions on which places will be a good fit, please do let me know. And yeah, it needs have a decent cash flow for rentals too :)
