Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

Happy to chat, network and compare notes with folks in this space. 

Use AirDNA to get a better feel for what may be projected and then dive into Airbnb and compare to your competitors. 

Relative AffordabilityDespite recent price increases, Buffalo’s housing market remains more affordable compared to many other U.S. metros.

However, the rental value this area is very low compared to the Home values and mortgage rate.

Some of the newer ones seem to take forever (45-60 min) to run compared to the older ones.

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

The new appraisal just doesn’t make sense, especially when compared to the first one.

How do I compare that to a comp that has 1840 SF on the main floor and 460 SF of finished basement space (and 1200 SF of unfinished space)?

have looked into Batchleads as well but quality of data looks comparable  Check out traceestate.com $0.08 per individual and $0.15 per LLC.