@Brian Garlington no and sort of...Delaware is a B-class suburb...here is our MF market in the 11-county region with the accompanying grading scale based on transaction price per unit...you have to remember that this is a "rolling scale" that only considers that last 6-mos of transactions...this can ebb and flow based on how the market moves, and what sells and what price point...there is more to this, but this is the starting point...Delaware is an area with very few MF transactions...the location consists of converted farmland with mcmansions flooding the market...the MF transaction occur around "old" Delaware and are more rural...price points are quite low and ROI is very high...ROI in any market is merely speculation and impossible to determine with high accuracy...how many listings have you looked at in your career and still have a handful of questions to complete your analysis?...

Permitting is merely their tool to account for every vacation rental, so they know to tax it at twice the amount of a non-vacation rental. 

I merely pointed out your advice is incorrect as to mortgages secured by Florida property. 

Even if you merely inspect the stages of construction to release draws to the builder, it's potentially risky.

Well that's what I was thinking, too, but then I saw some investor trying to offload their performing STR portfolio on Loopnet at a 5 times cash flow multiple which made me re-think about it.

It's the old issue of will this turn into a horrible recession, or merely a blip on the radar for the next 15 months?

A mere 1% interest rate change on 31 trillion dollar debt is 310 billion annually. 

Even doing comp itself is sometimes vague because like I say, comps high and comps low has three to four standard deviation, in a one million home, the range could be from $850k to $1.3mil.and to make even thing more complicated even the same house that was sold for X price in March, same house could go to 0.98x by December due to seasonality aspect of neighborhood and supply-demand dynamics.From statistical perspective, zEstimate is good when there're lot of similar comps in the neighborhood with condensed price pattern (for example, if neighborhood price is ranging from 200k-250k ; but it would be all over the place if home price is too low or too high).Even professional desktop appraisl would face similar problem as well, so I would not blame Zillow/zEstimate. this is merely statistical issue.So you still need professional appraisal.But again if you ask three different appraisar, they would come with three different opinions LOL , it's the reality.

I am merely touching on operational expenses.

Until an investor does a deal based on knowledge gained by some program or seminar, they are merely justifying their expenditure.