Determining ARV

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Hi all,

My partner and I just started our L.L.C. and are jumping straight in to real estate investing in Philadelphia. We just threw out 10 lowball offers, but nothing is under contract yet. One of the biggest problems we are having is coming up with the ARV. The neighborhood we are working in is 'diverse' and the value of property changes block to block.

For example, you could be walking down one street where houses are going for $55k completley rehabbed and turn the corner and the houses on that block are going for $120k. Our realtor is good with sending the comps, but its hard to make a decision on setting an ARV because of the variations, even within a .01 mile radius. We don't want to set the ARV too low because then our offers are coming in even lower and that makes it harder to attain a property. We don't want to set the ARV too high, because then theres a chance we won't get proper refinancing.

I checked out Bank of Americas site for some comps to compare to the realtor comps, as well as the Ditech.com apprasial tool to get an estimate, but I'm not sure if this is the right way to do this.

Do any of you work in areas where you face this problem? What do you do to come up with a reliable After Repair Value?

Thanks in advance

-Python