I can't seem to find solid numbers - seems to vary wildly.

To those commenting from out of state, believe it or not many areas of Texas are still the wild Wild West and the answer would be no as there is no permitting authority. 

You're throwing wild numbers out there and the market simply does not support your statements.Also, the "tester" of the market isn't worth its salt.

I am also here in MA, our market has far to wild of swings to go all in.

We all know a Z-estimate can vary wildly in either direction, but what has been your experience with how accurate the estimates are for properties on realtor.com? 

In this market values vary wildly from one street to the next.

We are nowhere near a workout of residential foreclosures.Nationally banks have 300,000 residential reo's with another 700,000 bank owned but not yet listed for sale.About another 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 residential properties in pre-foreclosure that are short sales or are just 30 days behind all the way to having failed trial loan mods.Most of these properties will be foreclosed as they work through the system or failed loan mod to BK to eventually foreclosure.So in my opinion we are about 3 years away to work through most of the residential stuff.You have to remember that distress is not evenly spread out across the U.S.There are markets that have continued to go up and have zero to little foreclosures.Then you have the speculative markets that are first to rise and first to fall with wild swings in fluctuation.Then you have market that dip and recover but the decline is not as severe and is spread out over time.Whether you wait could depend on your strategy to buy properties.If you are long term buy and hold properties might dip a little before hitting bottom but that gain might be offset by higher future interest rates.If you are paying all cash then waiting and having the interest rate climb by 200 basis points but buying for 50k less might be a winning combo.You have to really explain your game plan more.Investing is not a one size fits all approach.

You'll learn more from this deal then from a wildly profitable deal. 

This being Texas and the "Wild wild West", you're going to see all kinds of hokey mom and pop side deals like that.

most people wont buy this stuff.. it just sits there.. sellers were old couple up in Washington state they just got tired of paying tax's..But there was deductive reasoning there.. freeway interchange . new home depot.. take a risk what the heck it was only 27k  now with the big fires the city is fast tracking us.. but you can't count on massive wild fire to make your deals..