I was thinking maybe Houston because my boyfriend lives there and I’m there a good portion of the year as is, but I’m open to any good market.

I have a client that bought a condo to rent after living there and the HOA ended up outlawing rentals.

Because if you need to live off the cash flow what you're really looking for is a business. 

Have enough that after you buy the property you still have 6 months of expenses in reserves that you can use for daily living.

Even though we live in earthquake country, this was a new experience for us.

You'll likely also reduce your cost of living by moving to a stabilized apartment.Depending on the cashflow and debt paydown, you can use this strategy until you've built enough equity to reinvest.On the other hand, getting into a multi-family after refinancing will also help you build substantial equity to rinse and repeat in the coming years.

My mum currently lives there, she is 80 and not very well, but you would also become a tenant in common and as such if you had the time you could profit 100% from the transaction, as I need cash urgently and am willing to heavily discount the asset.I am wondering if there is a market out there where someone wants to get a foothold in the London market by buying my part of the property.

A PMC is the ONLY one that will deal daily with your property.Here's some copy & paste advice on hwo to screen PMCs:Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

The wear/tear is much less for STR because the guests do not live their full-time.   

(or if they're primary buyers, they don't care about yield, since they're going to live there.)i just went to visit two very distressed properties yesterday that i would buy.... if they were priced 50% lower.