I'm looking for books, articles etc on how to choose a real estate market.  How do you determine this?  What process do you use to evaluate certain areas of the country?  I think it's pretty hard to make money for buy and hold in my area and that is what I am primarily looking to do.  

I know that population growth, jobs, economy are involved but how do you get information to evaluate these things? Does anyone know a good system of determining where a good place to invest is? What areas will grow in the coming years? Where you can find good buy to rent ratios for buy and hold or BRRRR strategy?

Where to invest?  This is the million dollar question for me.  I seem to be stuck here.  I've been lurking on this site a bit, listening to some podcasts and reading some real estate books but I need to focus on an area at this point.  I really don't even know where to begin except for the "midwest" which still seems like a huge area to try to zero in on.    

I'd like to find a place where the cost of the homes aren't incredibly high since I don't have a ton of money to throw around at this point and with rumors of a pending downturn on the horizon. I'd like to find an area that at least has a possibility of appreciation and an area that I can BRRRR. Is there a method of determining where a good place would be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated especially if anyone has a method of how they determined what area they chose.