Sensitivity analysis can be used to analyze the property under different economic scenarios as well.

Good call on being sensitive to the family back story as well.

.- Got taken to lunch by my realtor, contractor, property manager, my tenants- Got scammed by a guy who posed himself as a MF lender- Got bullied by a real estate lawyer to sacrifice half my deposit for doing nothing wrong.A not so warm welcome.. got out with my teeth kicked in..That is not to say the market may not be for you!

DO NOT and I mean DO NOT contact those creditors or make partial payments to them.What that will do is REFRESH and old negative account and make the credit score take a nose dive.It is true it takes usually 1 to 2 months to update changed results in the scoring model.If the buyer has a time sensitive loan issue the lender can do what is called a "rapid re-score" with the credit which will update the credit report score much faster but costs money.In addition to paying down the cards your buyer can also request a credit line increase on all the cards.If 3 out of 5 or 2 out of 5 increase the limit that will help bring down available credit percentages to used credit even more.Even though the buyer is at 680 they want to try to get the score up higher.You do not want to be right at where the score requirement is and then something happens and you are off by a few points.Do not close credit lines.One of the scoring criteria is length of active credit history in good standing.If the buyer has 5 cards and 3 are 2 years old and 1 is 1 years old and the last one is 4 years old then you have a 4 years history.If you close out the oldest one your credit history in good standing has dropped to 2 years now which affects the scoring model.The buyer should stay away from big purchases cars,furniture,appliances,vacations,weddings,etc. until AFTER they have closed on a house and moved in.Those types of purchases are much more lenient on debt ratios than house loans these days.

Rents are low still in Edmonton, nearing a bottom, but this is an easy way to cut your teeth in investing for cash-flow (with lower maintenance if you are self-managing).

That middleman processing layer can become a real barrier with time-sensitive and transaction intensive assets such as rental property.A plan offering checkbook control such as a Checkbook IRA or Solo 401(k) will be a much more effective and efficient vehicle for the type of investing you are considering. 

I've spent decades educating folks to be more critical of disclosing personal / sensitive information, so it would be a little hypocritical - or, in the case of a person's SIN, illegal - to insist otherwise ;-)I would have been a tenant candidate who would not have disclosed his SIN. 

I would also say that investors by nature are cost sensitive and are always trying to save as much as possible and I totally understand that.

Start small and cut your teeth on the basics and progress from there like SFRS, MFRs, Commercial, Land development, etc...

Yes, you need to be price sensitive to a certain extent, but you also "get what you pay for".