Before spending money on hiring an appraiser, answer some questions for yourself, then do a financial analysis to see if it is a good buy or not.Looking at both the address next to your name as well as your reference to finding a Richmond, VA appraiser, this property isn't close to where you live.  

However I seem to be stuck in "analysis paralysis".

In this case I think most newbies, unless they have a background in running numbers or doing analysis, will probably either download some type of similar analysis on the web, listen to people they probably should not be listening to or worse relying on gurus and common knowledge (real estate is always a good investments, $20K houses can’t be worthless, etc.).

The rest of the information can be easily had by doing some crime searches, rental analysis, and by doing some simple sales searches.Regardless, we have a lot of good business coming to town what with ND being a recent advocate, the revitalization of downtown, the warehouses going up on the west side, and most recently an electric car company purchased the old AM Gen factory and has committed to building electric cars here.

Hi - I am curious to see what kind of analysis folks do to identify cities/towns where they believe are good places to buy and hold or flip.

Some suggestions based on our experience: Step 1: Focus on picking, then investigating 3-5 markets (it is really difficult to go deep enough on more than that and you'll likely just be in analysis paralysis).

They said it would cost about $500-$600k to construct and based on our analysis via sales comps around the area with similar characteristics, it will immediately have a valuation of $1.3m at conservative number ($600k for the lower unit and $700k for the upper unit).

It was just a little frustrating to put so much time,work, and analysis into something then have it laughed at. 

I generally suffer from a big case of analysis paralysis in most areas of my life.

Only the rent numbers are from me which I got from a market analysis of the area.