It is hard to predict it but if you are trying, why not choose a city that has tons of jobs continuing to move there as well as a 50 year history of sustained growth.  

Here's a good article from Harvard on How to Use Real Estate Trends To Predict The Next Bubble .  

The slight extra they are allowed to hold is to cover annual tax and insurance increases that they can't effectively predict and budget until that year's payments go out which is too late to collect them. 

The property sold for over $150,000 in 2007, so not a war zone...now granted that was then, before the crash, but the if the market is projected to recover at some slow but predictable rate, then appreciation could happen, but won't if the intrinsic value of the homes has decreased because now they are vacant and boarded up.

However, you can note it when you find the IRR and simply subtract your predicted inflation rate from the IRR as the cash you receive further in the future will inflate away more. 

There's always some puffing with numbers in most circles as people are trying to predict the market.

Hope all going well with you.Way better than I predicted 5 months ago!

Prior behaviour really does predict future..maybe they are breaking pattern, but i encourage you to  look for other applicants w less-blemished history, they are here (i'm in atl too)3.  

I was wondering if anyone could give me any suggestions on how I might fine tune my ability to predict the properties value before the official appraisal outside of just pulling comps?

And they're not wrong to feel that way either - it's just how things were framed to them.So to your question, my prediction is the market will react (as it has this week) and rates will get worse and we'll have slump in demand short-term, and that rates will settle down for the spring market.