And, I would need someone who could do the necessary background research to find reasonable estimate ranges for what property and rent appreciations are for both Minneapolis/St.Paul areas and Silicon Valley; and _ideally_ do the analysis across a range of values for each of the inputs. 

Background: (not yet confirmed) but I might have a lead on a sfh that someone just wants to get rid of for a price very undervalue ...caveat: I live in another country.

In the past I have sent rental contracts to a potential renter who was stationed in Korea, did a walk through of the property via FB messenger video chat, ran background checks with TransUnions Smart move, collected security deposit via PayPal and emailed the tenant the code to the lock box that had the key.

What's your real estate background?

It's back from September and a little 'technical' to get thru, but if you are interested in Zillow's Zestimate data and analytics background story, it's pretty interesting to listen to. 

I originally used it for the background and credit check feature and starting giving my tenants the ability to pay rent afterwords.

Credit and background checks !

I'm not sure if anyone else is having this experience but when I use the Forums result category and sort by Latest, the results are dominated by member profiles rather than forum posts. 

Anyone out there with a background in this stuff that has an opinion?

My wife is on the board of one of the HOAs, but both HOAs are using the same property management company to handle the accounting and day to day property management issues.The question for this post is, can some recommend a property management company that will handle a small number of units - either 14 or 7, and work with an HOA and is in Oakland.Here's the background -- the current property management company apparently only manages much larger complexes -- 100 units and up -- and so is not doing a good job with this small fish of a property.