How do you find out appreciation rates?

Question

Where or how do I find out if an area is appreciating or depreciating?? (I want to know for how long it will appreciate for, and when it will crash.) I know no one can tell for sure, but is there a way to estimate it? I heard there's a pattern to it but how does it go? Will the whole united state appreciate together and drop at the same time? Or is it city by city? 
And if it is city by city, will some cities appreciate for 2 years and then drop, while others appreciate for 10 years and then drop?
I don't want to waste time on a property that will crash real soon. Or even worse, wholesale it to a rehabber and have him lose money  when the price drops way below market after he fixes it up and tries to market it for 120 days.

Jon Holdman · Answer

Anything you come up with is little more than a guess.  This is not a productive use of your time.

Joel Owens · Answer

Nobody has a crystal ball. If we did we would all be billionaires.

Appreciation can go city by city and block by block. So you have to do a bunch of research and see what is trending for what you want to invest in.

For instance you could find for instance that a city has a 5% appreciation rate year over year. However upon drilling down further in that data you find that most of the appreciation is happening for 4 bed and 3 bath homes on one acre or more of land.

The condo's you were looking at conversely have gone down 3% a year for the last 5 years. So the local market is telling you that product is not in demand or favor as much as the other types.
Your MLS usually has most of this data.