That turned out to be hopeless, but fortunately the kids chose colleges that gave them decent merit scholarships, that helped a lot.

For example, let's say your market has 50% 3bd, 20% 4bd, and 10% 5bd demand.Does this merit purchasing a 4bd property over a 3bd?

Capitalism allows people to achieve wealth on the merits of their own efforts free of undue government intervention. 

Make sure the area merits the rent you’re calculating

Both SFR and multifamily have merits in Austin, it is just a different strategy and for SFR I would consider the outskirts or suburbs where you believe growth is occurring or is likely to occur.  

The claim(s) could be totally without merit, but you'll have to pay a few thousand $$$ in court to defend yourself and prove otherwise.  

Do you have any sort of written guidelines to help you determine what criteria would merit what % or fee? 

Assess it like a house and make a deal on its own merits.

A few red flags to watch out for would be:- Asking for a large loan application fee or other fees upfront  - Unusually low interest rates for a hard money/private lender (real hard money/private lenders aren’t loaning money at 4-5% but fake ones usually advertise those rates)- Email communications with really bad English/grammar indicating the sender might be from out of the country- Claiming they loan nationwide in all 50 states (most non-bank, hard money/private lenders operate in only certain states and don’t lend nationwide)- Claiming they can do loans from $5,000 to $50 million (most lenders that will loan you $5,000 can’t do a loan for $50 million, and most lenders that can do a loan for $50 million aren’t going to bother doing a loan for $5,000)- Offering to send you a photo of their drivers license (fake lenders tend do this to convince you they’re legit but I guarantee you it’s not their license they’re showing you and a real lender would never do this)- Not caring about your qualifications or the merits of the deal (basically willing to “approve” you no matter what you bring to them since they know they’ll never actually fund it)- Terms that seem just way too good to be trueThat’s just a few things to watch out for.

What is misleading to a reader who does not understand this, is they unwittingly believe the sales grid and adjustments have merit when they do not - these are employed methods that at the end of the day have been dismissed after development as meaningless and therefore irrelevant.All appraisals employ numerous methods and all appraisers must reconcile those methods at the end of the appraisal.