The hunt for a "2% rule" market!

[Gary Dezoysa]

Hey guys,

I've been outside of the US for a while, planning to come back early 2015.

The great thing about being away for so long is that my eyes are completely fresh. I'm ready to plant down anywhere that cash flows are strong (and there's not extreme racism – I'm dark skinned).

Goal is to achieve the 2% rule or maybe even better.

Here's how I plan to find such areas:

1. Ignore the coasts for obvious reasons

2. Target 3 bedroom 2 baths, roughly 1,300 sf. Look at retail listings. Take off about 4% to approximate the sales price. Take off another 20% to get to wholesale.

3. Rental prices: Use asking rents from Zillow as a rough approximation.

4. Rents less than 50 times wholesale value should signal a qualified market -- at the very least, worth looking into further.

^Do you guys think this is a decent way of quickly finding "2% rule markets?"

If not, anyone know a cleaner data source I could tap into for this kind of research?