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I wouldn't look at the assessed value at all. Those things are all over the place and don't seem to correlate at all with actual value.

Also, I would heavily weight any calculation I did with the remaining data to strongly favor the comps you get from the real estate agent. If you have a good agent, those numbers will be better than whatever you can get from the online sources.

The more I'm thinking about this, the less impressed I am with my idea. Initially I was thinking you could cover the whole cost of the new place with the HELOC, but that doesn't work out unless you use both your home HELOC and the other property HELOC. You almost definitely don't want the HELOC long-term, I was trying to find a way to use it to your advantage in the short term. With buying two places, if you just refinance the original property to get the $100K out, you run the risk of having that money sit around while you try to find one or both of the properties. I was trying to prevent that with the HELOC. In any case, it probably wouldn't work because I'm sure your HELOC on the rental property wouldn't allow you to then refinance the property without penalties (even with the HELOC paid off).

I think the definition of a bedroom varies in different jurisdiction. I've seen criteria that include (1) size, (2) presence of a closet, (3) presence of a window and (4) proximity to bathroom. I've also seen it stated that a bedroom cannot have its sole access through another bedroom. The definition can have implications for you in terms of advertising, insurance, permits, etc.

Well, this is just one opinion, but I would do the HELOC so that you can be a cash buyer to get your new properties. Being a cash buyer should help you get a better deal. Once you own the property, then (re)finance so that you can get a better rate. It sounds like your plan is to keep these mortgages for a long time, so you'd probably want to lock in a fixed rate that's much better than what you can get for the HELOC.

With zillow, you can use the "My Estimator" function which will allow you to decide which houses to use as comps and which not to use. It can help you correct for just this problem.

Well, clearly from the original post there was (would be) no intention of ever collecting the debt. It sounds like the goal was to artificially inflate the sale price so that the banks "80% loan" would actually cover closer to 90% of the sale price.

That's what I got for a house I'd value at around 90-95K. So, for this house, I guess it's "accurate" in the sense that it bracketed the true value, but with such a wide range, it's hardly useful for anything. There's a world of difference between a value of $85K and $144K. And if you just split it down the middle ($114.5K) you'd be off by a huge margin (on the order of 20%).

What's your current balance/rate/terms? If you only need the $85K for a relatively short-term and if the refi isn't that much better than what you already have, maybe you could look at a HELOC to get the $85K out. You can get those for no closing costs (but higher interest rates -- probably 8-point-something now). You'd have to compare the cost of the higher interest rate to that of the closing costs.

cap rate is NOI/purchase price. You are using cash flow instead of NOI. Those two are only equal if you buy the building for cash (i.e., debt service is zero).

I think that getting a loan for 100% of purchase price on a quad is optimistic. In a SFR you might argue that appraised value is greater than what you are paying, but I think that gets to be a much tougher sell in multiunits. I would never finance that much because I'm too conservative, so maybe I just don't know how high they'll go on these types of properties.

This seems low to me, but that may just be me. I would typically include repairs here, as well. Again, I'm probably more conservative than most around here.

You generally calculate NOI as income minus expenses, but debt coverage is not included in the expenses. So the real NOI is much higher than this. [Think of it this way, NOI is independent of how the building is financed.]

I'm not sure what "asking price" means. Who's asking? I would look at NOI over what I actually paid (and I include it all, like closing costs and repairs, too, even though not everyone does that -- I'm basically looking at return on total investment). If you're trying to divide by what the property is "worth" you will run into a circular argument, since at quads and higher the market tends to set a cap rate and the prices follow, rather than the other way around.

With your numbers, this thing is going to have a very good cap rate (around 13%) but I think your sale price may be overly optimistic for a quad with gross rents of $4000/month. Just my opinion.