Rent out my sfh to students?

[Mordy Chaimovitz]

Hi BP forum. My 1st post ....

I  am In contract for my first deal EVER. Two attached townhouses next door to northeastern il university. I was Planning on renting them out as  regular single family homes but a friend of mine suggested  I should look into renting them out as rooms to a students. 

Q1 does student housing have better returns (coC and roi) then reg sfh? 

Q2 when I look to sell them do i comp other sfh, or cap rate to determine  asking price

Q3 would I need to provide furniture 

Q4 any legal stuff I should be aware of ? 

thank you!

[JD Martin]

If you rent these by the room to college students you are going to work for your money, that is for certain. Depends how much work you want to do. Better returns aren't magic - you get better returns because you do more work and take more risk. College students in and out of rooms are hard on properties. We used to rent pretty heavily to college students (I'm in a college town) but as housing prices have taken off we are getting more families than before. I think we only have one or two houses with college students right now, whereas we have had times where 80% of our properties were rented to students.

Linking @Will Gaston here as he's a big college investor.