Mainly because I admire the warm weather and lack of "winter" compared to the midwest.  

There are 5 comparables; many of which were sold in the last 6 months As-is.

i did comparables myself with mls

Also note that you can't use list prices, you need to look at actual sold prices - usually within the last six months, within as narrow a radius as possible to the property you're trying to value, on very similar properties - in other words, Comparable Sales, or "Comps".A realtor should be able to run this search for you in about five minutes when they're logged into the MLS, and they can exclude REOs and Short Sales (or include them) - depending on how you want the comps to be run.I recommend getting your hands on some old appraisals from a professional appraiser (and/or broker price opinions), so you can see the process they use to determine market value of a particular property.I also recommend making friends with a realtor who will "run comps" for you occasionally.

I really think going over stock market investments, or comparing the two  is touchy.

When I am doing a straight forward fee simple single family I just use a local title company. 

I plan on attending my first local BP meet-up this week to network with actual humans, and would love it if you reached out to say hello, and/or to compare investing notes. 

These areas are all connected downtown via rail and have close proximity to a number of schools, but have a slightly more mature population compared to say Manayunk.  

Compare their track records, compare their contracts.

The advantage we have is price, things are incredibly cheap here compared with the rest of the country.