They will serve a purpose for you one day again in the future, perhaps, but the experience you will be getting by self-managing should give you a lot of insight on how to hire and manage a PM to your satisfaction.

Prices still seem good (granted I'm comparing to GTA prices and not, say, Milwaukee or Indianapolis, etc!)

Where are the prices now compared to when they bought them?

@Trevor Lohman - there is a very interesting discussion on crowd funding going on right now (http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/520/topics/105106-comparing-crowdfunding-sites-for-re?

All residential properties (1 to 4 units) are valued based on the comparable sales approach (using "comps").

Most will sell out, they want the money now, not the headaches to get more later and many realize pop's old rentals aren't going to appreciate.Another issue, properties in a trust can be expensive to administer since trust accounting can require market value assessments for accounting purposes, meaning appraisals, not book value or guesstimates.

We also put on this side "Get Top Dollar For Your House" and a local number.You have many different ways you can market. 1 way in which I do not recommend unless its for listing purposes only is.

To compare, I looked into rental furniture for doing the staging set up ourselves.

Thanks for sharing, I have been trying to keep up with beltline projects, as many of the investors I work with are purchasing homes in these areas for buy and hold purposes as the project continues to grow.

If they ask why you want them just tell them you are very detail oriented and want them for documentation purposes.