I found it extremely helpful in taking to my other members and managers to be able to classify RE markets into segments (e.g. what you've done with new construction vs. existing and I did with HUD held-for-sale) and convey the data behind my rationale for suggesting price bids, etc.  

Pretty straightforward project but extremely useful for my investing career going forward. 

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.PM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

Extremely helpful. 

Getting a Heloc or Heloan secured against your primary residence is going to be extremely difficult without income/ability to repay.

Before the crash, it seemed like you couldn't get the numbers to work that well in terms of cash flow but you could find deals here and there and the financing and appreciation was definitely there.During the bust you could easily find discounts but the financing was impossible to get and the rental profits were extremely tough and thats even if you self managed. 

If there is debt on the property you run into the debt-financed property issue which can cause the rent to be treated as UBIT and be subject to the trust tax rate which increases to 37% extremely fast.

As a side note, John Beck’s presentations were so complicated and John was in any case extremely difficult to follow.  

They have been extremely helpful for me, I think it all depends on what questions you ask.

I don't have any experience there, but based on the metrics, it seems like an extremely solid place to investigate.