Have you searched www.trulia.com? You can search listings of stuff for sale or for rent. Just type in an area you may be interested in & see where it takes you. Pretty neat site, we have been using it lately in our search for a house. Far as finding one with a big garage or shop building, you may be able to put that into the search to help narrow it down. I haven't looked at any rental property, but out of all the listings we looked at around here, several had decent size buildings on them.
I live in Victoria, which is kind of centrally located between Houston, San Antonio, & Corpus Christi. About 60,000+/- population. Town is ok, its growing. There is a new Caterpiller plant going up as we speak, huge... Housing seems to be doing well, new ones going up in several subdivisions. Two new high schools & a jr. high just went up last year, all at the same time. Now two overpasses are going in out on the loop. All this activity seems to be that employment opportunity is pretty decent.
Far as boating, its ok. There are a couple lakes within a half hours drive from town. One of them (Coleto Creek Reservoir) they are supposed to be enacting some over transom exhaust restriction. Not sure if it did or ever will go in effect, noone seems to have the straight story. Other than that, its a pretty nice lake. The other, Lake Texana, is not too bad.. Can have a tendency to get rough, but there is very little traffic on it. Other than that, we do a little traveling to other areas, most of which are within a 2-3 hour drive.
Hope some of this helps, I'm sure more folks will chime in soon. As Tim mentioned, there is different climates & terrain to pick from.
