I had been a published author for all of four years, and in two of those years my expenses were greater than my income.

Zillow openly explains this at https://www.zillow.com/zestimate/ and publishes their median error rates and other stats for some major metro areas at https://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc.The good news is, it's relatively easy to validate how accurate it is for your market:Have your realtor pull 50 or 100 active and sold homes in the market/neighborhood you want to analyze.Compare actual asking and sold prices to the Zestimate for each one, put them in a spreadsheet, and develop some averages. 

Account Closed published a blog post on this recently. 

These 6 months I was working with my developers to "create" a site (system) that, once published, would be considered creditable. 

Depending on the state, this means they must give you proper notices and publish proper notices of foreclosure and set a sale date to sell the property at auction to the highest and best bid at a date in the future that is no less then the law allows in that state. 

Once I learned that end I saved a lot of money from needing to pay a technician to replace exhaust fan motors of relays.You can learn how to do roofs by reading the wrapping paper on any bundle of shingles, or you might be able to find an article called "your roof, for heaven's sake" which was published about 25 years ago by a California property owners' association.

@Nicholas Sambrick In addition to those mentioned, I'd add The Real Estate Rehab Investibing Bible by Paul Esajian, and Real Estate Wholesaling Bible by Than Merrill (even if you aren't planning to wholesale).Also, @brandonturner published  "The Best Real Estate Books for Your Investing Business " on BP which might be helpful.I find audio books work best for me on the way to and from work.

Do you happen to know if it's possible to form an LLC in a different state, one that doesn't require the publishing of owners, such as NM, in order to increase privacy? 

If you paid $10,000 on new vinyl windows and saved 10% on initial cost over aluminum but in 20 years have to replace them then the math says you need to save $10,000 in energy over 20 years because the aluminum lasts 50 years.Also, most of the published figures on energy savings compare new windows to old ones, not new aluminum to new UPVC.

The MLS forms are for entering the property into the MLS and are not related to the actual contract + disclosure forms published by the state Association of Realtors®