Rents almost never go down if you are in fundamentally solid markets.

Also, nobodies claiming that you NEED a college degree to be successful; many have taken college courses at a very low cost thru Coursera  or EdX and and acquired the fundamental knowledge necessary to launch a successful business.  

I know you mention other metrics in other comments, but this comment alone can lead many inexperienced investors down the wrong path with bad investing fundamentals.

It was a low entry barrier "real estate investment" in a good area where with the right amount of leverage followed the fundamentals. 

Most of the fundamentals are in the post. 

Spending 90 hours on BP would be a much better investment of your time than spending 90+ hours on a real estate fundamentals class ( plus it will cost you $300).

A proper market research and a belief that real estate investing in Canada still makes sense is very important to us before both of us take such fundamental steps.Can anyone advice where would you start in this situation?

@Michael Notowas asking the basic fundamentals of whether or not this would be a serious issue.

As for something I would not do again, this is a hard one, as I believe that failure leads to growth, but the one fundamental thing would be to not be timid or a pushover.

You can see these fundamentals reflected in the crazy rent growth we've seen over the last 5 years.Developers are putting in thousands of new units, but because ground up construction is so expensive, they all end up as "luxury" rentals which many folks are priced out of.Regarding foreclosures - as a % of overall sales we are at a historical low, but who knows when that will turn around.