Help a newbie by answering questions on student housing in Europe

[Bjørn Starup]

Hello everyone,

My name is Bjørn, I'm 25 years old from Denmark. I'm about to finish my Master's degree, then looking to get nice little job and to invest in real estate. 
From watching many hours of real estate investing videos on Youtube, I've found student housing, as where you for example divide a property into five rooms and rent it out per door, as the most profitable and what I would like to get into. I've looked at investing in student housing close to major universities in France, Spain or Italy, where there are many international students etc.
However, I have some concerns so far:

Q1: Student housing with international students have a high turnover rate and the tenants may only live in a room for a semester (like 4-5 months). From what I've read in David Greene's "Long Distance Real Estate Investing", some property managers may charge a fee for every new tenant (like half of first months rent) and this would eat into my cash flow. Personally I would rather pay the property manager a higher fee, than having to pay such fee. Any of you who has experience dealing with high turnover rates for rooms that are managed by a property manager?

Q2: If I would be investing in the countries mentioned (France, Spain and Italy) it would be out of state (country) since I live in Denmark. I will be choosing such locations because they are simply more profitable than what is found in Denmark. However, does any of you have experience on getting financing in another country within Europe? Would the lenders want a higher down payment since I'm not a resident in the country, or would the standard 20-30% down apply?

Thanks a lot for your time and for helping out this newbie. These questions have been on my mind for a while now.
Kind regards!

[Andrea P.]

Managing a single apartment rented to several people is a challenge. As far as I know is like part-time job due to:
- High turnover
- Quarrels among tenants
- Non paying tenant
- Tenant inviting other person
Even more in Europe you have extremely tenant friendly law and I never heard about Property manager as we intend him in the US.
Despite I was born in Italy and I live in Rome, I felt more secure to rent a property in the US rather than Rome due to:
- Business friendly environment
- Landlord friendly law
- Property protection law
- US screening (i.e. credit score)