I’m temped to order an appraisal this month, or does that seem like over kill and do you recommend I sit back and trust the real estate process?

Now, don't get me wrong...I hear exactly what you are saying but then again isn't that really just to weed those that just want another course to sit on their shelf and point to and say...that doesn't work?

I would sit tight and save some more.

You need to sit down with someone and do this on paper. 

But if you do have a house that sits in expansive soils and are susceptible to shrinking and expanding they can put pressure on the basement walls (exacerbated by frost/thaw cycles) and cause them to crack horizontally.

When I go to events like this, I do go to some of the sessions, but most of my time is just sitting in the lobby chatting with people. 

Scheduling is the hardest part of construction , good subcontractors are not sitting home waiting for the phone to ring , they are scheduled out weeks if not months ahead of time .

Their children (now in their late 40s) inherited the house, but they have not listed it on the market, and I heard that neither is willing to move into it from their current setup, so the property has been sitting vacant.

All the major PMS platforms have hundreds of reviews on there and you can get a great sense of what will and won't work for you without having to sit through 5 or 10 sales demos.I discovered both OwnerRez (for our STR) and ThinkReservations (for our hotel) on Capterra.

If i hadn't tried several other things, I would have never found this one and I'd be sitting on the rental portfolio doing nothing right now.