What city and state would you move to, if you were giving advice to your younger self, to start your real estate empire and why?

Timing played a huge role in things as well as location.

For timing--- we got into things in 2010. Not a lot of competition. We've picked up houses from older ll's who didn't maintain and didn't screen, and were frustrated with the quality of tenants they ended up with--- who would then trash the houses and make things worse. Most of our stuff ranged from heirs cashing out houses they didn't need, to would-be flippers realizing maybe they were gardening in the wrong town, to people moving on with life elsewhere and wanting a quick sale, to tax foreclosures. We only had one bank foreclosure-- plus our own primary residence had been a bank foreclosure-- and I'm not too quick to do that again. The subprime mortgage crisis helped wipe out some would-be competition-- or perhaps distracted them elsewhere in more profitable zip codes. The ACA helped wipe out additional would-be competition. Oil and gas, being a major component of our local economy, was also not very profitable at the time, and that further helped wipe out competition.

So--- we were thriving when other people were miserable.

It's not really a recipe I'd like to duplicate.

We started real estate when it made sense personally--- life had brought us to our area, and we'd be here for the remainder of our working lives, if not forever. So we could get into an investment that would tie us to the area forever, and it wouldn't be a problem, because we'd be here anyways.

We started real estate when it made sense personally--- we'd paid off our debts (vehicles, home, student loans); we had good-paying jobs; we were growing our family; we could afford to convert quantities of money into tangible house-form. I found tangible house-form way more comforting than just numbers printed out on a letter. I wanted control; I didn't want to be dependent on "other people" for my kids' college fund, for my retirement, for my investments, etc.

No one with half a brain would ever invest in my area on purpose. But each crummy house we reclaim from the bulldozer... we do our part to build our community and give people a clean/safe/functional home to live their lives. If we earn a little $$$ along the way, that's what makes it worthwhile... because there are other causes I'd prioritize if I was purely interested in philanthropy. ;)

So we're not here to invest, but we're living our lives here anyways... so even though it's not ideal, I wouldn't not-invest just because it's not "perfect."

I would work backwards. I would pick several places I would consider moving to based on climate, amenities, cost of living, etc. and then if there were some that were equal or near equal at the top, I would choose from them based on rental environment. But I would not choose where to live based solely on LL/tenant laws, etc.

I started out in the right place at the right time, when I turned 18 years of age and in Southern California. But over time, 12 years into being an investor, the iron curtain came down (1990) and the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles lost 300,000 aerospace jobs. Thin in 1994 we had the Northridge Earthquake and 1 in 5 homes had damage. So for 7 to years, property dropped 50% in value.

This is nothing to new, during my 43 years of being an investor/landlord, I've seen 3 complete cycles of declining real estate values.

Now that I'm an old fart, early 60's, I wish I were somewhere else. With each City/County Department thinking overtime on how to pull the wool over tax payers eyes to cheat us out of our hard earned profits.

Razorback, that's sort of what we did. We got out a map and picked out a place we wanted to retire to. We knew we wanted water. We knew it had to be east coast because that's where the kids were and still mostly are, and we didn't want to be a flight away, it had to be drivable. We knew we didn't want to be in the middle of nowhere, we wanted the kids and grandkids to WANT to come visit even if it was just to use our place as a hotel. :)

We had never even visited the Outer Banks until we started taking driving trips to check things out.

We fell into RE investing by mistake. Bought a duplex to retire to, fixed it up and rented it out, realized we had no place to stay, bought another one, ditto...by then we realized that long-term rentals were in short supply even back then (2003) and started actively hunting for properties. Like Deanna, we liked finding the crappy little cottage someone else would tear down and fixing it up...

Similar to most here, I enjoy the area that I now live. I was fortunate to move to the Pittsburgh area 25 years ago, when the city was beginning to slowly recover from the collapse of the steel industry, circa 1970 - 80. I had moved from the east coast (Philly) so property prices were a relative bargain here. I purchased 3 multi-unit buildings in a first ring suburban area during my first three years living here and have been holding there ever since.

Though the city was slowly recovering for the first 10 years of my landlord career, it is a big enough city that there were always some good folks looking for a decent apartment (e.g., employees with US Airways, PNC / Mellon Bank, Univ of Pittsb and CMU, UPMC hospital system).

After 25 years, Pittsburgh is now a thriving city (in a midwestern kind of a way), rents have more than doubled and the value of the buildings have tripled.

Pitt is a great school. I think Pitt and Pittsburgh is becoming really popular with the crowd from eastern PA / suburban Jersey. Unlike 20 years ago, I find a lot of the non-local Pitt students really want to stay in Pittsburgh after graduating.

1 million liquid to buy real estate (so can acquire 4-5M of sinlge family or 50 at 100k each. (or crypto, leaning towards crypto and Puerto Rico for 6 months, then back to real estate), and mobile, can live anywhere. do not need to live in the same place I invest. not sure why people assume that. Its been 11 years since I left my little pond in MI, now reside in Utah. Utah is nice but returns arent. I need east coast town for 10 cap to 20% IRR. If I hit it big in crypto and can afford to buy 20M-50M apt complex that would be nice, but kind of looking in the 5M range multi family or 100k single family home where 10k acquisition can earn 100 per month rent.

Pittsburgh rates pretty high on my list but I dont like the architecture / age of the houses, many being 100 years old and im assuming leaky stone basements.

Huntsville AL rates very high on my list.

and Im placing priority on red states, TN, KY, AL, MS, as I dont trust blue state governors to not infringe on landlords property rights, aka eviction moratoriums.