The real estate investment community tends to be pretty sour on college education.

I'm up in MA and one of the credit unions I tend to work with only require a 5% downpayment for people with great credit which helps since many of the 3-4 families close to Boston are well over $1M.

I tend to focus on B/C neighborhoods.

House was built in 1980, is in a safe area with good school district, but it's a small town between two larger towns that has lower demand (but also very few rentals available and they tend to go quick). 

As your unit is a four bed/2.5 baths, you will definitely attract more families rather than individuals who rent with roommates. 2-3 beds tend to attract the latter rental group and with the larger amounts of beds and baths, that's more appealing to a larger family renter.First couple is obviously out - too many people and it does not seem like they're qualified.

The larger brokerages tend to have more training, but also take a larger cut out of your commission.

Seasoned investors tend to get the most bang for their buck in these cases. 

Most of the time the reason is BS but every once in a while you get the honest "being kicked out"I require 5 years of address history on my application because previous landlords tend to be a more accurate reference rather than current landlords. 

I would tend to agree with @Caleb Heimsoth  that you may not be in the right financial situation currently to invest in real estate.

My hesitation with BC is that I can only afford a condo and don't feel like that may be a good long term investment, but also a 1M+ detached home in greater BC wouldn't be a good cash flow either and would be moreso banking on appreciation only which I wouldn't feel comfortable with.I have actually looked into edmonton and even flew over to look at some of the bi-levels but the 300k-ish ones tend to be a bit rundown and more work than I may be interested in as a first time investor from afar.