Of course, the estimate is only as good as the data being entered. 

As long as you are aware of some of the complexities of this loan type and prepared to deal with them accordingly, you will be good.

Some real estate investment plays are for appreciation and I don’t have data or a graph to present but my educated guess is that it is in the minority as much of it is for cash flow and or value added propositions to force the appreciation.

Please keep in mind that the BA is very different than "California", so don't take general CA data and apply it to this local economy. 

Education - Ive remodeled some retail buildings and rented them out but nothing fancy like a 30-60  unit apartment complex or bigger .

BUT you could always buy and older multifamily or apartment complex, rehab it, and then force the appreciation to refinance for another one.Norfolk is fairly similar - just on a much smaller scale. 

several issues: (1) obtain environmental monitoring data to see if current tanks are not leaking(2) how old are tanks. did the gas station replace older tanks?

It's a straight line (in the real world, data is messy), where it should be more of an exponential growth rate based on historical rates.3.

Hi everybody,I am looking at a distressed apartment complex in a small town of about 8000.

It's right by the Peoria Sports complex which drives quite a bit of traffic to it.