Multi-family Student Rentals

[Nolan Neu]

Hi Everyone!

My name is Nolan Neu and I’m a long-time member, but I took a hiatus while I was in medical school. I am just about to graduate and am going to complete my residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in NH. I'm extremely excited to finally be making a salary and get into the real estate entrepreneurial/investing world (aside from becoming a physician, a longtime dream)! I aim to purchase a multi-family and house hack - it just seems like such a powerful way to build wealth. I have family members who are real estate agents/property managers who will take away most of my headaches of homeownership, so I was hoping for any advice about the process for a first-time homebuyer/landlord in the student rental market. Looking forward to being more active in the BP community, the podcasts and bookstore have been so useful so far!

[Landon Bleau]

Congrats on graduating!  I too am interested in the same strategy, I've found great value in the BP podcast 195, 215, 220 so definitely give all those a listen.  One of the biggest things to consider is when you're able to rent out the properties, it's unlike the rest of rentals.  In a typical rental property, you could buy the property and rent it out anytime of the year.  With student rentals, school obviously starts in the Fall, so you need to look at when others are marketing their rentals for the following school year.  With this, there are better times to purchase student rentals than others in my opinion.  For instance, if you wanted to buy a student rental in July 2021 for the 2021-2022 school year, but everyone at that school already had their housing arrangements set in April 2021, you'd have to figure out a different strategy to get the house rented for a year until you could market to interested students. Just make sure you have these numbers included in your costs and realize you might not be getting that student rental premium rent for another year if you buy too late in the year.