Here's some key data on the average rent, days on market and percentage of listings that are seeing a rent decrease.

Do not buy anywhere state or metro populations are stagnant or decreasing. - Metropolitan statistical areaLow crime - High crime and long-term appreciation and rent growth are mutually exclusive.

Most of them are rent by the room strategies with 5+ bed homes and using various types of grant programs to pay down interest rate and decrease closing costs.

I have a pre approval on hand but with higher interest rates and market prices still high for which I see price decrease but nothing pre-pandemic level.

Now this doesn't necessarily fix your income and qualifying concern but would greatly decrease your cash out of pocket and allow you to use that cash else where. 

If the comps are built in the 1950s, then it won't be as much of a price variance as houses built in the 90s.mostly because, all things being equal, people who are OK with buying a house built in the 50s are probably going to be OK with a house built in the 30s.If you can only find 3 bed 1 bath houses to comp, then you will use those, but you will decrease the sales price of the comp to adjust for an extra (value adding) bedroom.

Can see a relatively consistent decrease in unemployment during this time period.  

But as promised i wont shower the haters with more boring details like just how beautiful downtown Detroit has become or how Detroit is becoming one of the top tech cities and start up funding cities in the Midwest, or how there are more engineers in Detroit then any other city in the country or how loads and loads of people from all over the world are visiting everyday and loving it, or how AWESOME the Industrial market is or how the three big casino’s just had their best year ever or how for the first time in 50-70 years there wasn’t a population decrease or how AWESOME Dan Gilbert and Mayor Duggan are or how great the banking, healthcare, hospitality, industries are doing there or how boutique hotels are literally popping up on every other corner downtown, or tell you about the incredible rebirth of Midtown, the revitalization of Livernois, or how renters are lined up down the block waiting to rent a freshly rehabbed property or how the hotels and motels are busier then they’ve been in a decade or about the gobs and gobs of all the positive and infinite economic and Housing Market indicators that are putting big happy happy smiles on the faces of Detroit investors and those associated with REI.

What works for one person will not work for another.What it won't do: Provide a magic formula, decrease the amount of work you need to do, or make decisions for you on what you should do or how to do it. 

So even if rates stay flat, the “delta” may still decrease even before rates drop.