Noise, traffic, odors, lighting and other external factors can impact marketability. two cents worth :)

What grinds me a bit is how this does tend to contradict his good VS bad debt principle.

We had tons of experience and contacts, but it still was an uphill grind to get in the door.

I'll revisit this and see if if we are required (i.e. regulatory) to do this or if the Rentalsman is just trying to keep the noise level down on their end of things.

My FICO was very similar to yours as well.Keep on grinding!

You have to stick to your plan regardless and ignore the noise.

I'm sure there are city-noise ordinances in place, but can those realistically be enforced?

Looks like I'll keep grinding it out for a while until I'm a little bit more stable on my own and have fine tuned my real estate knowledge.

If you have access to the broker's wholesale rate sheet you can grind down the pricing, not a position brokers generally like to be in.I think you are right that it will extend the lending process, and you will probably get no more than an 1/8% decrease in interets, not worth the stopping and restarting of the process, imo.

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” ~ Steve Jobs