Frustrating lender experience

[Tom Gillotti]

I recently began working with Roofstock.com to find a turnkey property. So far my experience with them has been mostly pleasant. I've put in a few offers but haven't been successful yet. That's probably a good thing, though, because apparently I don't have appropriate financing. 

Originally, Roofstock connected me with some of their preferred lenders but their rates were advertised to be around 5.5-6% so I decided to shop around. I had worked with Rocket Mortgage/Quicken in the past (primary residence) so I decided to reach out to them again. Initially, everything was pretty smooth, with the exception of having to pull some proverbial teeth to get information on rates and closing costs (4.5-4.75% rate, closing costs were still a bit of a mystery, though).

Shortly after the approval from Quicken came through I put an offer in on a $90k property. As I had been approved for $200k (~800 score/healthy debt to income ratio) and was comfortable making the offer as it was a turnkey property, with a tenant in place and I would be putting 20% down. When I asked my rep from Quicken about closing costs on that particular property is when he responded to let me know that they could not offer me a loan on a property less than $200k [insert stunned and confused face here]. I was speechless. I asked why I was not told of this before and if there were any other lenders that were a part of their network that could approve a loan for a property under $200k (seems like a real arbitrary number to me...). I was told no and that I should look elsewhere for lending options [reinsert stunned face]. 

Ok, well no time to waste being puzzled on this one. Let me reach back out to the lenders that Roofstock referred me to. Yup, still much higher rates. Back to BiggerPockets to search the site for others. Better.com... seems like a good business model and they should be more competitive, hopefully in line with where Quicken was with rates. Ha... nope. Highest rate yet. At least they disclosed closing costs. They were in line with my expectations (can't remember the exact amount at the time of this writing), but that rate... can't do it. Pass.

So, I'm back to square one with lenders and find that I don't want to analyze any more properties until I get this figured out. I get that rates will be a bit higher for investment properties but I've recently had two lenders show me rates in the sub 5% range (other was a local lender in one market I've purchased in before) and with rates as low as they are across the board I'm frustrated that I'm seeing rates in the 5.7%+ range.

That sounds a bit entitled as I read it... so, I understand if I receive no sympathy but the higher the rate the lower my return and this is a numbers game the last time I checked. 

Thoughts from the community...?