Pittsburgh is very nuanced, lots of the neighborhoods are street by street and there is a lot of gentrification underway in various different areas which seem to run in 20 year cycles as far as I can tell. 

What usually happens is if the reserve is not met then it rolls to auction.com or back to the court house steps with a little bit lower reserve and the cycle goes on until the reserve is met.

I just get budget stuff on sale at Home Depot .

Buying whole sale is a lot more risky!

Hello group,I've purchased a property from a seller that is holding the mortgage so on the Deed, contract of sale and Title, the owner is the LLC.

Just another form of agent marketing, creating a sales funnel, etc. 

He may be able to use the local MLS to see if he can locate any similar property sales in the last 12 months. 

For ARV look at the comparable sales within the past 90-180 days (depending on your market and recent inventory- the more recent the better).

Since you still have a mortgage on your first property, transferring title *could* trigger the due on sale clause if the mortgage holder looks into it.

On the sales side, they very familiar with the investor mindset.