I have worked, quite successfully, for a national home builder as a production manager and with my contacts and sub contractor relations I believe I have the tools and knowledge to build/develop homes efficiently and lucratively.

I also use the tools provided by KW for my personal business.

I am not trying to learn this strategy just to close these 2 potential deals but to add more tools to my tool box.

In my opinion it's an awesome tool giving you total control of retirement funds.

Once you know the typical price and the typical rent you can use a tool I created to determine if you can make money in that market. 

For instance, here in the Dallas area, we have access to North Texas Real Estate Information systems (http://www.ntreis.net/).You could also check out the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, which has links to tons of different research tools. 

We ran a property we were looking at by our HML not to long ago. He sent us back a very detailed analysis. It included population statistics, growth, aerial photos of the land, ARV, school district reports, salaries, ...

The assessment value is just a tool for calculating property tax. 

Im so glad I ran across Biggerpockets,  so far it has been a great information tool and I cant wait to get more involved with the site.  

Unless you are an experienced investor and are using the fact that you won't be asking for a buyer's agent commission as a negotiating tool then there's absolutely no advantage that I see to going it alone.