Ask them for an "as-is" value and a value of you did some minor upgrades.

The appraisal took this into account subtracting 15K per sale for an average Adjusted Sale Price of:=$320,347Even though my property was listed as Superior Upgrades along with 3 of the comps.

Also have a list of items that you have fixed up or upgraded and give that list to the appraiser. 

I would then like to buy some multiunit properties,  live in one,  while I upgrade/renovate the others.I guess I wanted to throw it out there to the experts like you and see if you could help guide me.thank you again

I also look at a worst case scenario IRR of 10% (flat prices, high maintenance, slightly lower rent) .Secondly I think 10% for maintenance costs is reasonable excluding planned upgrades (roof, heater etc.).

After 15 years of living in the property, the renovations feel more like upgrades.

My investor friend who is quite successful told me that was not a good enough... that I needed to find comps knowing exactly the upgrades in each.

I'm wanting to upgrade my moms house in Ventura and then sell it.

Just upgraded to PRO and started practicing with the calculator on a few properties.My wife and I are interested in investing in multi-family housing to rent out for cash flow and capital appreciation downstream.

Never had issues with late/missed rent, but I ended up offering cash for keys after about a year because I found there were a lot of headaches unrelated to rent payment - noise, unreasonable maintenance upgrade requests, no respecting communication boundaries, etc.