I spoke on stage in Las Vegas about the filters I use to determine where to look for properties to buy and keep as rentals. Here's what I told the audience.
I use a filter system to filter all the houses in the entire USA down to a small geographical area.
Filter 1: Choose an affordable state near you
Filter 2: Pull up a map and look at all the small cities within 25-30 minutes of a medium sized city
Filter 3: Eliminate areas with high insurance costs, places most likely to have floods, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes
Filter 4: The 1% rule
Filter 5: Taxes: Property taxes on rental houses for local or out-of-state landlords, annual license fees, short term rental taxes
Filter 6: Appreciation
Filter 7: Population increase
Filter 8: Is it an affordable area for renters-can a renter earn 40 times the monthly rent amount at a local job
Filter 9: Are the local landlord-tenant laws fair and enforced
I used these filters on 5 states and found 5 cities that look good. Listen to Episode 2 of the Paths To Fortunes podcast to find out which cities and why.