Been working with several investors on flipping houses in the Houston/Dickinson Area where flooding was bad durring Harvey. 

All of the data is shown right in front of you, and you have to apply your own heuristics for selecting the appropriate comps including their age, distance from the subject, counts of rooms, size within of each other, lot sizes, etc.We can discuss all day long about how good or bad Zillow data is, and honestly, it depends very much on the market, and how quickly a sale gets reflected in the public record.In my SoCal market, it's actually pretty quickly, and I often end up using a blend of suggested comps from Zillow and my own comps that I import from other places such as Redfin, your free MLS alternative.

@Michael Arreola Looks like you made the best of a bad situation.

I've seen rates increase a little but not too bad.

For individual units, the cap rate isn't too bad at around 2-5%, especially considering the appreciation, but I feel like I have money stuffed under the mattress with the large amounts of equity I have built up in them.My end game is to leave Beijing and move to the SW U.S. when I retire from my current career within the next 5 years. 

For example, if you buy an average priced sfr deal and sell it tomorrow for $15k, that's not bad as long as $15k is pure profit.

If you look at the transaction as a whole, you took a massive deduction one year, likely paying no tax and losing tax attributes, then in the final year, you pile all of that deduction back on top as ordinary income in a year you likely have higher income....I am not saying it is a bad idea, someone who doesn't have much income will certainly want to weigh this possibility and consider their timing. 

Unfortunately I was injured pretty badly and was medically retired from the military recently.

(bad marketing too, no doubt).

Also as the tenants pay down your mortgage you can use that equity for other real estate transactions.While hiring a PM is very daunting and we tend to get a bad reputation it is possible to have a positive experience with a PM.