We won't have a conservative/reactionary national administration forever, and the Congressional election results (in particular, having Maxine Waters as the incoming chair of the House subcommittee that deals with housing matters, Jack Reed or Chuck Schemer as her Senate counterpart) are a hopeful sign.

I'm not trying to be a buzzkill, but you have some larger issues looming and if you don't get those things in order, you'll be throwing gasoline on the fire with a rental property.

But even this is subjective, since nicely remodeled will have a premium to dated, but an unusable, large home will sell at a discount when viewed as per sq ft value.For a comparable finish quality, on equally desirable street in same neighborhood, we have sold properties almost exactly at the same per sq ft price as smaller properties, but they were equally usable as their smaller counterparts, i.e. 2,900 sq ft 4 bed 3.5 bath versus a 1,900 sq ft renovated house 3 bed 2.5 bath

Apply thru www.creditcards.com - where they give options for Gasoline points, low interest rates, low balance transfer rates, etc. and also specify what kind of credit level is expected.

Lenders very much like to see W-2 income (which can be ironic, since business owners can often make much more than their W-2 counterparts).

There is some place there that takes crude oil and makes it into gasoline. 

Agreed.The 401k, and it's nonprofit counterpart 403b and their non-employer based friend IRA, are excellent tools for a host of reasons.

I was so excited about this concept when I first arrived to BP but alas I've come to realize it's probably not feasible due to all the factors Roy mentioned, plus the fact that we just have a much smaller and therefore tighter market than our US counterparts.

Yep, you don't want them storing gasoline and fireworks down there....

You can still definitely cashflow on properties in Canada, however your cash-on-cash return often won't be as good as our American counterparts because you'll be getting less rental income in return compared to what you put down on the property.