We ended up measuring everything ourselves (paid Lowes $70 just to see what their pro measuring serve has to offer and it was an absolute garbage as all was inaccurate).

I feel there should be some kind of additional measure put in place to weed out many of these realtors prior to them being "realtor certified".

One of my favorite measures in making this type of decision is return on equity.

The property has a slab that I think was used for a basketball court at one point and we measured that it could fit a 1400 sq ft home on it.

In addition to listing high yield markets, the research report outlines low vacancy markets, total return markets, affordable markets (% of rents relative to income), and other key measures affecting prices and rent growth, including unemoloyment, job growth, unit absorption, and population growth.  

That's always a good start and a measure of the service and availability you could expect to receive.Find out what services they provide, as well as what they cannot. 

I guess the question is, do you want to measure yourself by average performance, or perform in the top 10%?

The appraisal can be more stringent, but that really depends on the appraiser. 

It has a more stringent appraisal which would cause the sellers to often go with a conventional if all other points are the same. 

Is it reasonable to ask the HOA for this measure?