I am open to finding a house that needs a fix up, however I am concerned with my lack of experience in real state.

Inflating their moneyAnyway, the people you've been talking to lack historical perspective.

You should only have to change when your current software has a flaw or lacking feature causing you to spend too much work on a work-around.

It does tend to keep laziness and lack of effort from breaching the wall. 

The former is fine, even if it's suffocating it's just personal opinion of a lack of tolerance.

The lack of urgency has been underwhelming so far, honestly

Some things that make a rental appealing 1 - pet policy (pets or no pets allowed)2 - number of full bathrooms 3 - number of floors (single level vs multi)4 - backyard or lack thereof5 - school ratings (higher the better)6 - crime ratings (lower the better)7 - location to highways8 - amenities (parks, pools, trails, lakes, etc)9 - location to place of employment.10 - age of the property 11 - appliances Just to name a few.

I don't have any real life experience with building or developing, so excuse my lack of knowledge. 

The issue is a lack of control over anything going on with the mortgage and anything associated with it.

Yes and was quite abrupt about it, lacking any sense of client service or sensitivity to why I might object and immediately severed our working relationship, despite that I offered several other ways to meet her needs while minimizing how much I might compromise my always safeguarded ID.