When it comes to multi-family investment properties, the Zestimate in the parts of Allegheny County that I've studied is less accurate than it is when it comes to single-family homes, to the tune of 50% on target within 10%, 50% inaccurate in the scattershot way I've described.I would encourage you to think of the Zestimate as our outfit does, yet another tool in buying and selling properties, an independent statement of value that has outsized power over the decisions of casually-informed buyers and sellers, and even more importantly, a statement that can be manipulated to achieve your desired outcomes.So my thinking goes like this: when YOU buy and sell as an investor, especially one making make-or-break first moves, you have to learn how to do your own comparative value assessments, and you have to learn how to do them using the same detailed techniques that the most experienced and successful local wholesalers and foreclosure buyers use, not agents who have the time to "pull comps" for free for every fresh-faced lookie-lookie with a preliminary loan approval letter in their pocket.

I've really enjoyed listening to the podcasts and reading the forums for information on creative financing techniques which will become much more needed in the near future.  

Hope that this mapping technique is helpful to others as well.

All of the above mentioned techniques have worked and still work for me.

As for the old call the bank technique for dealing with these guys, that stopped working a few years ago.

Also, I am using e-bay now, and will in the future, hence the "auction" part of my name.I have been studying real estate techniques on and off for several years now.

Buy and Hold would qualify for 15% long term capital gains except for the 1 perceters who would be at 20%, that's half or less of a tax rate, and is a big difference.A hybred technique would be to buy and hold long enough for long term capital gains.

Using this technique only records one real estate transaction (e.g. registering the title in the LLC's name).

The thing about seminar ‘Gurus’ is they love to sell long drawn-out, overly complicated techniques that do nothing more than keep you busy chasing your tail and buying more books, tapes and seminar reservations.

Its a pretty well understood technique.