While this is a cool area with natural springs that does draw in people, most people are local to FL and there is a lot of camping. 

Reward in RE prices for risk of course.As for horizontal I get mine from local community banks ..

The best place for true private money is usually in your local meet-ups!

Other international markets may be too opaque for me, and I'm definitely going to invest in China as it's not possible to even have more than one property in your own name (to the best of my knowledge) and the local government can find many ways to screw you over if they wish to.

Quote from @Jason Bohling: @David M. unless it is with a portfolio lender which most credit unions and many local banks are.

Only five of the qualifying 25 local cities saw a population decrease, topped by Bee Cave (-2.7%).

If you're investing in real estate out of your home state don't you have, at minimum, a Realtor, Contractor, Property Manager, Lawyer, etc. in the state where you're looking to create a local presence?

I have a close associate with a large project there and the local banks have turned off the spick-et on funding his developments and these are very large multi thousand acre deals.

can you invest locally instead?

Instead of throwing your deal out to a bunch of strangers on the internet, I recommend you do your research to find a local expert with 20+ ACTIVE years in real estate in your market.