A lot depends on your appraiser/lender.I wouldn't necessarily worry about rent control issues, only to the extent that the city may attempt to convince you to keep your pre-existing tenants for longer than you'd like when you move in (your old tenants may call the mayor and/or city when they figure out you are raising the rent, and the mayor/city is very proactive about trying to help tenants in need, etc.).

If you buy a condo, check the condo docs (they might be on file online via the Registry of Deeds, if not you'd need to check with the seller) to see to what extent they allow rentals.  

I like having my hands in the game to a certain extent. 

I didnt do this and have lost one potential tenant to a neighbors dog, and have had my own bad bad thoughts wide awake at 2am on how to handle the barking.  

Your tenant just wants you to stay the hell away and no sooner are you relaxed then the place becomes part of a city wide drug raid.

The great thing about real estate is that it allows you to leverage money, people, resources.So yes, if you are on the leverage side I would use it to the fullest extent possible. 

It's a rhetorical question to some extent, but it's one I've been trying to wrap my brain around.  

The down side is it has a dilapidated double wide trailer (on a cinder block foundation) and its not in the best trailer park subdivision.

I'm most interested in getting into buy and hold investing because a passive income business is important to me since I'll have to be in training for a couple years and then deploy.I'm the type of guy who'd be jumping in headfirst, hustling, and working 24/7 on this business if I was in the civilian world, but I'm currently a little hesistant as my military training comes first, and I'm worried about diving in too deep before I know the full extent of my committment during training.Anyways, I'm going to continue reading and learning until I figure out what's good with my training timeline.

I am in Cranbrook and while our economy is different then in Castlegar, both markets are diverse, reasonable demographics, lower costs of entry and pretty high cap rates (10% cap rates are on the MLS right now in Cranbrook).I have entertained the thought of a local investor meet up at some point, maybe we need to make this Kootenay wide?