The suggestion of transferring the property to an Corp sounds like it wouldn't help in this situation.A lender will not give the ability for an officer of a corporation where he/she has no profit interest to take capital for lending purposes.If there is no mortgage, your brother can consider doing a cash-out refinance.

I’ve been practicing running numbers on tons of properties and recently came upon an interesting listing.

If their buyers agent has done only a few deals it's really no different than working with someone unrepresented anyway because at least in PA the licensing classes teach you nothing about actual real estate practice.  

I am concerned about this initial hit impacting my ability to qualify for a mortgage, or qualify for a better rate, and therefore wondering if I should pay off my loans ASAP to allow for recovery.

.#5 Practice, Practice, PracticeWalkthrough potential rehab properties (or find properties virtually online) and practice creating detailed scopes of work, quantifying repairs and estimating rehab costs for the projects.#6 Get Your First Rehab ProjectYou can practice all you want, but ultimately you will learn the most about estimating rehab costs by actually rehabbing a house.

Not the ability to market, negotiate, analyze, take photos etc. 

One must have a great acquisition strategy and the ability to execute on the upgrades.

We are now back to the normal practice like we were pre COVID.  

The ability to use passive losses from real estate starts to phase out if your income is $125k, and disappears completely at $150k.

Only have the ability to borrow 45k.