Who pays when the resident breaks the agreement and quits paying? 

If it is not adding up, and you can find an attorney specializing in that type of thing, it may be worth paying for a little of their time.

Going to guess the $797 is rent only, with tenant paying utilities.

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

Reporting the proceeds you pay to seller on a 1099 sounds reasonable.

The best strategy is to buy properties that need fixed up with hard money/HELOC, fix them up, the refi out to pay back your HELOC/hard money.

Some PMC's will charge a lower percentage fee, but will charge it whether tenant paying or not.

Instead, he said to borrow the money from a person from Canada and pay them a dividend on the borrowed money. 

The only thing in that county is that I pay a higher property tax rate as an investor vs. a homeowner. 

Sometimes hard to find this happy medium in rate sheets, though.Another consideration would be taxes - points are typically treated as interest, so if your tax obligations are high this year vs being higher in the future, then this could also impact buying down now vs paying a little more in interest in future years.