He seems to be doing well because he takes fishing trips to Canada with the boss every year.I told my realtor to see if they would respond to an offer of 200K down from 220K and she told me it was a bad idea.

I'm not aware of any way to get money out of the business at anything less than the top tax rates so if you, or anyone else reading this has ideas, I'm all ears.Since we are now connected on LinkedIn, we can chat about the money thing, but my belief is that investing in real estate in most cities in Canada does not typically throw off enough cash for someone to live on. 

Do you think using the HELOC is still a good idea?

Ive been toying with the idea of teaming up with investors for that one if it makes sense.  

A credit card and automatic payment is a good idea.

I'm looking for some ideas on questions I should be asking the realtor I might work with to buy my first rental property.

This is not a debate about Dave Ramsey-we are out of debt and have 6 months emergency fund and don’t adhere to his investing advice but I liked this idea when saving to buy real estate. 

I have been researching some data / cities for OOS and have tons of ideas. 

Do you have any idea how much an eviction might cost you?

We market the property at lower price and then discuss a sort of 'cost averaging' for that utility during lease signing.Here's another 'out of the box' idea - depending on your layout and climate - you may consider electric baseboard heat as a different option for heat, coupled with using window units for air....Jim