Learning the agent/investor relationship

[Tyler French]

First as newbie, I have to say I am still blown away and so very grateful for biggerpockets and the endless insight and valuable information I have learned in my few months of scouring the forums/content.  

I recently moved forward with my search for my first multifamily property. The agent i am working with has not worked with investment properties, and so we are finding our way in terms of the process.

As we are both fairly new to this, I want to make sure my expectations are reasonable for it to be successful while also being reasonable for their time. A few things I ran into that I wanted your thoughts:

1. We had a upfront conversation regarding how since I will be aiming to offer 20% below ARV that we would be probably going through multiple offers before closing one. But I'm still curious what do you feel is too many showings/offers for it to be worth an agents time? (Acknowledging that is a blanket question)

2. At what point do usually ask for your agent to provide you with estimated market value on property? We have an MLS setup with criteria, and using the steps i learned here the plan had been to get as many of the key numbers crunched (cash flow, cash flow per unit, estimated offer price,etc) prior to asking for a showing, and just use the showing to confirm repair costs,etc. When i had asked them the estimated market value to finish my analysis, they expressed concern that what was doing might be too much work upfront, and I should get into detail of comps after the showing.

I understand these things depends partially on the relationship of each investor/agent, but i just want to have clear reasonable expectations set for us as we move through this.

Thanks!