I noticed an interesting trend, recent crazy ARV prices for Little Village 2 units especially on east side.

Tiny-House Village.

As a property manager, STR owner, and advocate, this sleepy village in the mountains near Los Angeles struggles to find balance between residents and the booming STR market.

Also Roscoe Village and Irving Park I like a lot. 

For thousands of years we have improved as a species via reliance and improvement from our village elders and wise people, it's how people can make decisions and actions beyond their capability, move the bar a notch higher for all civilization, through absorbing that wisdom from elders.

The factors here are several layers deep...1- The threshold decision is rooted in local ordinance and zoning...if you're in an area with tight local ordinances you're fighting with the people that live in the neighborhood before you ever reach the city zoning folks...this can go one of many ways2- ROI on the conversion...you're first stop should be with a local architect...they are worth their weight in gold when navigating a project like this and will wade through the regulatory waters much better than you...and a simple phone call may be telling to whether the conversion would be permissible.The extension of this is the cost of the renovation in relationship to the rents received...the stars would really have to align to say you should spend a significant amount of cash to convert a performing building with 4 revenue streams to serve another function (but there is more to this)...and the cost of construction (and lumber in particular) is 5 fold what it was 1.5 years ago...3- As you indicated...exit...I think the only rational reason to convert a 4-unit would be to get condo status or single family/ shared wall and sell one or both of the units to an end buyer (you are basically paying the role of a speculative developer here)...this is happening frequently in locations like Olde Towne East and Merion Village...hard to demonstrate how successful this has been, but it seems far fetched reasonable consumers would pay the same for a  free-standing SFR they would for half of a "duplex" or condo, but who knows for sure.Either way you look at it you're in a residential appraisal situation on the comparable sales approach....4 unit buildings are still "single family" homes. 

I'm currently analyzing an off market deal off American Way close to Parkway Village.

Listing noted both units are rented month to month at $1,350/mo each, which was on the lower end of the market.What I liked: (i) Location (nice B+ suburban area, close to the Villages and Orlando, 65%-35% own to rent ratio; that particular pocket had low to no crime and no registered sex offenders vs. other parts of town), (ii) Product type (3B/2B duplex with a garage, which is rare to find and is ideal for both a small family or a single professional with or without roommates; most duplexes on the market have no garage at all and are 1B/1B, 2B/1B, or 2B/2B), (iii) Age (2006, i.e. while it was on the higher end of my age spectrum it was less than 20 yrs old), and (iv) Upside potential - opportunity to bring rents closer to market post close (tenants were on month to month leases) and forced appreciation by performing minor refresh with some deferred maintenance expected due to age (roof, HVAC, heater).

County is a collection of villages and suburbs doesn’t do justice to a place that’s bigger than 40 U.S. states in population, bigger economically than almost all of them.

Since truth is stranger than fiction as I write this I'm about 5 miles from the east gate to Fort Riley in Manhattan Kansas.