How to find comps when there are barely any?

[Matthew Metros]

I am trying to find comparable properties for a San Antonio 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom multi-family duplex and struggling to find comparables in the market.

My process is to:

1. Go on Zillow

2. Select Recently Sold Option

3. Select a recently sold period of the last 90 days.

4. Select Home Type as "Multi-Family"

5. Select 4 Bed Rooms Exact Match

6. Select 4+ Bathrooms

7. Zoom in on the area for where I want to see comparable properties

So what ends up happening is that I literally only have 1 property that shows up. When I zoom out even further, I only have 3 properties show up. But at that point, the other properties are so geographically distanced (~5-10 miles) that I think it would be unwise to classify them as comparable properties.

How do you currently get around having limited data to work with? Is this when you reach out to a local person in the market to verify comparable numbers? My goal is to be able to do this with data because people can fudge numbers - While data is hard facts.

[Joseph Cacciapaglia]

There are a lot of multifamily subdivisions here in San Antonio that only have 1-2 sales a year. You'll need to go back further than 90 days in many cases to find a truly comparable property. If that doesn't work, you will also need to expand your geographic area. If you're working with a local agent that spends much time with multifamily, they should be able to give you a decent idea about what other subdivisions are relatively comparable to the one you're looking at. If it's a one-off multifamily build, meaning it's not in a subdivision full of similar properties, then you'll have a much more difficult time. Running comps can be as much of an art as it is a science in these situations.