They have even raised the assessment by $5000.  

There are ~3 dozen or so now.

The loan officer and underwriters were more interested in our credit score, payment history, debt to income ratio, our assets, our tax returns, our job history, and the assessed value of the property we wanted to purchase.I wouldn't be signing any lease/rental agreements on property that I didn't own.

The three are estimated to be sold in the range from 54k-65k (with assessed values of 90k-99k) and two of the three claim to be newly renovated and painted.

Many of the sites you mentioned are nice guides, but personally, I find they are off the mark sometimes by as much as 20%, especially Trulia and different municipalities assess at different percentages of actual value and the last Tax assessment may have been several years ago.

Property taxes in Birmingham are lower - about 1% of the assessed value, compared to 2% to 2.5% in Indianapolis.

When you acquire 1/2 dozen, or more, properties you can begin to get some discounts when you purchase all of your insurance through one agent and increase deductibles but it is very much worth the effort to keep the premiums low.

At this point I'm not fully understanding the relationship between Fannie Mae and CREFCOA; and how to assess the cost of CREFCOA's services.Many thanks!

Actually,  think the CAD would be our county Assessor, who has all the property info an generates the tax appraisal amount, which is called an assessment here.  

She's not the type that is going to shot guy a bunch of low offers but she know about the market and what makes a good rental as we have over a dozen in CR ourselves.