The bank wants conservative appraisals.Unfortunately, you are at the mercy of the appraiser.

After inputting the rough but hopefully conservative numbers, I have yielded some really remarkable results.

I believe this is very conservative.

Throughout this example, we’ll take some shortcuts that make our numbers more conservative.

Most underwriters are not investors and they are paid to be conservative, they wouldn't understand moving from one 4 unit to another unless you had good reason like the new place is 5 minutes from work and right now you leave 45 mins away.

The return on this property look fantastic.Taking a dive in the expenses you are projecting, I think you are being very optimistic on those numbers.A 1% vacancy rate is very low and very hard to achieve.Same for your Capex and repairs expenses.It is best to be more conservative.

I also took real estate courses afterwards at NYU, including Real Estate Taxation.Unfortunately real estate taxation changes constantly, and unless you're in the business, you do the most conservative things, thus short changing yourself.

The sale was immediately invested into conservative, income driven stocks/mutual funds, etc. 

Request the tenants leave, flip to 3 bedroom, and rent to new tenants at $986If I convert from  2 BR to a 3 BR, I've calculated a payback period of 2.3 years... here's the high-level of how I came to that number:Annual Opportunity Cost:3 BR vs 2 BR Rent = $2,790My Time (expect less needy tenants) = $1,183TOTAL OPPT COST= $3,973 <-- This is a favorable numberCost to get unit ready as 3 BRTotal to flip = $7,551 (includes paint, new floors, converting basement to bedroom, etc)  2 Months lost rent = $1,510 TOTAL UPFRONT COSTS $9,061 <-- This is an unfavorable numberPayback Period =  $9,061 / $3,973 = 2.3 years (Note if I'm conservative in my nubers, this becomes 3 years)Couple more things to note, they're set up on re-occurring payments and have not missed a payment.

There's a very small sample size for comparable apartments on zillow/craigslist/realtor.com and I was wondering if anyone has any strategies they've used to calculate accurate/conservative rent prices for specific neighborhoods?