Under (and around) 100k is my niche here in the suburbs of Detroit. 3rd largest city in Michigan.

Vicious circle that likely will benefit only the largest of developers.

I'm currently employed as a project manager with one of the nations largest general contractors, have been for 5 years, and it's treated me well both educationally and financially.

There are many others but those are the 2 largest I know of.

My short term goal is to house-hack a multi-family unit to cashflow while at the same time saving on the largest expense we all have, housing!

@Zachary Steidl Assuming there are no "almost broken" items, I like to have the cost of whatever your largest repair might be, plus 3-6 months of rent.

What is typically the largest hurdle for this type of dwelling is the property boundaries. 

@Greg Gallagher is an agent who works with a lot of investors south of Seattle and he's also one of the leaders in REAPS, the largest REIA in the area which is a great place to network.

BUT, if you'd like to see some very reliable data relevant to the Austin real estate market, the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M is the nation's largest publicly funded organization dedicated to real estate research and an excellent resource for quantitative economic data.https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/If you go to Research -> Market Research -> and select the Austin/Round Rock MMA, it pulls up a list of articles and posts from credible resources (sorted by topic) for the Austin market area.

'Rural' isn't exactly the correct word, since some of these cities are the largest in CA, but the industry is primary agriculture.