3) what are the steps I take to a clean slate?

Good luck and congrats on making the important first steps toward your goals.Jon 

I have CDN 65 k sitting in a bank account and want to buy a property to live in eventually but want to rent it out initially.

We were initially looking in the Provo/orem area but my husband has a potential job change that will be taking us to Phoenix.

Every tenant in this case has a number.The cost to you of $2000 today is small to make this issue go away this week and seek your next step in the life cycle of this investment. 

The next step is to find a property and actually pursue it.

I was initially considering purchasing my first home as an investment property outside of California where homes are more affordable.

My total bill last month was $2800 which put's me on track thus far for over 33k per year not including tax returns.I should disclose that I have another business that keeps me traveling pretty much half the year.Our Real Estate business operation looks like this:Property manager handles tenants and collects rents, he deposits all rents into our accounts and coordinates the rent roll with bookkeeping, they cut him a check for his gross collected rent management fee, bank statements are automatically sent to CPA's office for them to reconcile against business credit card statements, they also handle 95% of day to day financial operations from there to include paying contractors, setting up utilities, paying company bills ,bank deposits etc. for 4 and now 5 entities with the short term rental llc.We have a initial goal of 100 doors so I it's pretty easy to see this cost jumping significanly in the not so distant future.

When I initially started out, I was living Omaha so it was very easy managing open houses and getting units filled after turnover with tenants.

Initially, our plan was to save the cash flow until we had enough to put 30% down on our next purchase, but we learned more and went in a few different directions.