Paul,I see you're a Facilities Manager...I went to Mass Maritime for Facilities Engineering.

Peter HalleyWelcome to BP from a fellow Maritimer (& displaced Bluenoser).Were you planning to wholesale at home or in the USA?

The salary for an on-site manager will be dependent on the location:  it will be greater in Toronto than here in the Maritimes. 

You can lookup the tax assessment on any property online, but will not see the ownership information or whether the tax account is current.We get "unofficial" leads on properties from realtors, lawyers (usually as referrals) and mail carriers (they make great bird dogs).As for wholesaling, I've never seen it as a viable practice here in Canada, particularly in the Maritimes - due to the relative size of the real estate inventory, low default/foreclosure rates, conditioning of Canadians to use real estate agents, etc.  

I'll go a slightly different route ... also keeping in mind that we focus primarily on multi-family properties.Here in the Maritimes, oil, electric and natural gas are all roughly the same from a cost perspective.  

If you look close to SFU, you will have a student tenant market available.Now, if you plan to invest remotely, there are places - say in eastern Canada (Maritimes) or in the U.S.A rust-belt / mid-west - where your 30K will go a lot further (In parts of the mid-west U.S.A. where you could purchase a duplex for 30K).Please take the time to read through the materials here on Bigger Pockets, much of it is universally applicable, but in the areas of financing, regulations and taxation it will be U.S.A. biased ... however, there are many Canadians here on the site who can field questions for you.

There have been thousands of Passivhaus multi-unit buildings erected in Europe and a {scant} few in North America (none in the Maritimes), so the idea and the building techniques have been proved. 

In several cities in the Maritimes and New England, the highly desirable 'A', and the 'B', neighbourhoods are 100 - 200 years old and the building stock is predominately Second Empire, Queen Anne, Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian.  

Never owned real estate before, so open to anything - Alberta, Maritimes, USA...

The Maritimes in general, and New Brunswick in particular have been in population decline for a number of years (the young move away, the retired move back), yet there are thousands of new houses being built.