Sure they want to get them off the books fast, primarily due to the hard cash they have to put up to cover the debt, which kind of hampers their cash flow, particularly when it's 5 x the debt!

Living solely off your business is going to hamper the exponential growth that your money is capable of.

Then you want to hamper a really small part of investor business.  

Austin's new laws banning anything that isn't owner occupied will definitely put a hamper on things.

That could hamper any future goals of obtaining a RE license to practice in the state.

I wanted to see what people thought of this decision, as I have no debt from my undergraduate schooling and am not sure if incurring many thousands of dollars in student loans would severely hamper or delay my dreams of investing.

Most PM companies are hampered by the property owner wanting to do as little as possible while making as much as possible on the property.I maintain properties to a high standard and have had to terminate a number of PM contracts because the owners had too low of standards.

However I think paying it off earlier will hamper my ability to invest and grow other income producing assets.   

A fair bit has been written about "tenant blacklists" that have essentially been created by preemptive filings for eviction by landlords in NYC and other cities which have severely hampered tenants' prospects for finding housing over relatively minor issues occurring during their tenancies.

I know this is not optimal, but various factors (emotions, spouse wanting to keep current tenants in, etc) have made us not move them.That has hampered our cash flow, but the appreciation of the properties/area have kept any discomfort at bay.