I also admire your commitment to spending quality time with your family.

Where you fall in that range will be dictated by bedroom count per unit and the quality of the area/building itself.

That is in the contract as a deterrent to prevent an owner from using our services to find a high-quality resident and then moving the management, thereby hurting our reputation with the residential community. 

For example, should we focus on acquiring one high-quality property in a strong market, or would it make more sense to spread the investment across multiple lower-cost units in emerging areas?

Lowering your standards invites expensive evictions and repairs. 

By definition, these type of loans are not the same quality as what is traded on wall street. 

MTRs fall into the standard long term rental( 30 day +) category and will follow those regulations set for Long term rentals.

@Thomas FarrellRecommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

We have seen maintenance costs skyrocket over the past 2-3 years and every case is different but here are some general guidelines for reputable (non-crackhead) investor level pricing in our area of operations:Furnace and A/C replacement with lineset for standard 3 bed 1 bath bungalow.

Even still, it could be said that I've still lost money due to my time on the tools instead of prospecting as a real estate agent (the cost of lost opportunity).If you can truly do 80%-90% of the work yourself (at acceptable quality levels) and you aren't sacrificing your time where you can get better returns for your efforts, then yes, it can work even up here in Canada.