Stain is ~$40/bottle and sealer is $200/5 gal.Tile counter tops are really cheap to install.If you do exterior repair on soffit or fascia, always go back with hardie, less maintenance over time.Places like surplus warehouse will give you a 3% landlord discount on doors and windows (and they're already dirt cheap).Capex is important to keep track of but with so many alternative options to pay for the expense, I don't stress too much over it either.  

We're hoping to stay here for many years, but use the equity we've built (through home equity loans, heloc, etc.) to buy a cheap rental property later this year, and go from there.

That sounds like an awesome way to get over here and live for cheap while you make some great money.

4.9% is dirt cheap in a long term historical context.

You just have to make sure that the property you are buying is cheap enough so that there is a nice gap between the purchase+rehab costs and the ARV.

Could just be hype, but there are NOT a lot of other houses available in Brantford & this one is very cheap!)

When I looked at it for possible use in a SFR it just looked cheap to me.

For the cost of a newspaper, its to cheap not to cover all my bases.Thanks for the insight guys.  

My first thought is to buy a small multi-family which run from $45-$74,000 on the cheap end in my area (Johnson City, TN), I take care of everything other than the loan, and we split the cash flow. 

There are books you can purchase for very cheap on amazon that will teach you different strategies to use in REI.