You must be thinking that I'm saying something I am not saying, because what I'm saying is purely common sense, no extensive scouring of data necessary. 

Obviously everything here is purely my opinion and speculation.

PS, basing your choice of lenders purely off the quoted rate doesn't tell you anything about their performance.

On a pure dollars and cents point of view though investing here is not feasible partly because the average price of a home is over $600K but also because they are all negative cashflow even if you bought low and fixed it up.

In other words, your opportunity to require that the 1st floor apartment be vacant prior to closing has passed, pure and simple.

That is a serious accusation, and you make it with pure speculation and ignorance.

Ottawa's a tough city to get a high cap rate in so the monthly cash flow is typically lower than desired even if looking at a pure rental.I definitely wouldn't say we make a "sh*t-ton of money" :) but we have about 3k/month left over in our budget after all of our expenses.

I usually give the existing tenants 60 days notice so they have ample time to find a new home but beyond that, it's purely business.I do not recommend staggered increases over any stretch of time because that just delays the inevitable.

I like it as a team approach, I think that provides the value add, is set up purely to the customer’s benefit. 

However if this is purely investment (is no plans to move in after some time), you need to objectively do the math on your expected return given what you think price appreciation will be over the life of your ownership ( @Leo Kotschenreuther makes an excellent point) , weighting the risk of a downturn and your ability to continue to fund this investment, and compare that to using your 500k +2k/month to fund any other investment (Amazon stock, bonds, passive investment in a syndicated deal elsewhere.... ) We are holding our San Jose MF, but I've stopped looking for my next deal in silicon valley... property here is all priced for perfection (ultra low cap rates, neg cash flow, smells like 06-07!)