This ensures accuracy and keeps a watchful eye on the USPS!

@Tim Pagano ACCURACY and PRICE are the two biggest factors in my opinion.

There's also an aggregator which puts "everything" in one place: Trovit.On banks reselling properties, I believe SAREB is what you're looking for.How to find the real value of a property:This is the holy grail of real-estate investing, I suppose :) I know of 4 tools here (in no particular order):RealoBBVA (requires login)Valoracion.esTerceroBI can't guarantee for the accuracy of any of these tools, but they might be a good starting point. 

In watching the foreclosure proceedings here (which are educational/entertaining/addicting) the biggest reason for a foreclosure getting kicked, and having to start over, is if they actually have a trial, and the "witness" for the plaintiff, which should be a rep of the servicer, doesn't have all the proper paper work, and more importantly can not speak to the "accuracy" of the payment history print out and explain their "industry standard business practices, controls and procedures".

This may or may not be a surprise, but the MLS carries a disclaimer on the accuracy if any data provided in a listing, and that the buyer should verify any data on their own.Here is a link to the realtor.com terms of service and you can just go down to the disclaimer section to read:http://marketing.move.com/terms-of-service/So anybody who gets burned by data from a listing on the MLS did not do their homework.

I understand that most people don't take that responsibility as seriously as I might, but I still feel part of my place in this fine community is that to the best of my understanding the knowledge that is communicated is held to the highest standards of accuracy and clarity.So as you put it, Mr.

Only in pro forma analysis would unrecognized income be considered and mixing actual and anticipated income together is totally incorrect.Not only from an any acceptable accounting stand point but from any logical system that can have any accuracy at all.

With stock trading, you can monitor your results every minute ... even every second ... with great accuracy and make adjustments.

That will get you started and allow you to gather enough information to judge the accuracy and reliability of what various contractors tell you.As an aside, it seems that generally on "This Old House", when they're rehabbing a big house up in New England, the heating update is to a new, very high efficiency (90%) oil heater.

For those who say "nobody can know what's to come", well, then explain how I did with near pin-point accuracy.