You need comparable sales BEFORE you spend $175 or the appraisal will come low to your expectations.

R&D is like split testing, trial and error is "I'll be damned to spend the time investing in knowledge so let's just hope we survive the guessing". 

However I'm thinking if I ever hit the windfall on something like this, their pockets are probably way deeper than mine and I'm not going to want to spend the money to fight it.

I'd start by looking at where the money is going and how to increase your income and lower your spending. 

Make sure you spend a lot of time reading, learning, and meeting people before making the first investment.

Option 3: Find a better investment at this time.Stop thinking of yourself as a real estate investor and start thinking of yourself as a well rounded investor.Pay off your mortgage: Your money is not working for you when you spend it on liabilities like a personal residence.Buy Rentals with little/no cash flow: You are speculating what a rental will be worth in 20-30 years.

How much are you spending on tax filings, anderson advisors, banking and checking accounts per year?

Why would you spend the money on an appraisal now?

So I don't want to spend $90K on a down payment and closing costs and only have $25K to fix it up.

REPS requires you to spend over 750 hours annually and more than half of your working time on real estate activities.