Over my long years of landlording I was much tougher on; uncleaned ovens, tubs and bathroom tile, "inadvertant" sheetrock holes from doorknobs, unmowed yards, unweeded flowerbeds, untrimmed shrubs, dirty windows and so on than carpet.

It's a nightmare out there right now and everyone and his uncle has a prediction for the next 'bubble' or the crash when the Fed raises interest rates, but that could be a number of years away, meanwhile the investor has sat on the sidelines (so many people became quickly priced out of the market because of this 'wait and see, cross fingers' approach) thereby losing appreciation potential, or buy the property and know that it could depreciate quickly when the market turns.It really does feel a little like getting into the stock market right now.

Can't put my finger on it exactly because I kept one house I got from a BP member and it has around $95K gross equity in it.

So my plan is to continue working full time (for now); to fuel my real estate business, start building a client base, (fingers crossed with a few commissions) and then start finding/obtaining rental units for my portfolio. 

Crossing my fingers, as I'd love to meet some fellow BP'ers, even though I'm a newbie!

In a perfect world, the income from this property will pay for itself and another property. fingers crossed..

Crossing fingers, I will be refinancing the property by April.

I see Zestimates as a finger in the wind to see which way the wind is blowing and that's about it.In states where sales prices are public record AND where zillow is able to access them then it seems like an okay tool for getting rough sales comp data, at least for a first pass evaluation.I suspect it's value doesn't just vary state-by-state but also by county and municipality within some states.Try looking  up the local assessor's office for your area and see if they have online records and compare those to zillow.

I think there’s a little more to the story also , I’m going to pass anyhow , going to look at a duplex this weekend so fingers crossed !

As for the hopefully related to the profit, I know that we will have a gain with almost anything we do because of the overall condition of the home and the location but because it is a little over an hour away and the effort that we will be putting into doing this we are 'hoping' that it isn't just a minimal profit so that it makes it worth all the hassle...of course this is an unknown but we have fingers crossed.Thanks again to everyone and I have a feeling I'll be on here again in the future!