switching home from rooming house to triplex in D neighbourhood

[Ralph Noack]

I purchased an old house (built in 1885) which over the years has become a rooming house. You rent out a bedroom; there is a common kitchen & common bathrooms. Its very run down & neglected. There's a 7 bedroom unit in the house & then there's a separate 1 bedroom unit which is relatively new & barely needs work.

I do not wish to continue running a rooming house. The tenants are not great. Lots of drama, filth & non-payers. Police are there all the time. So I'm partially gutting the place & converting to either a duplex or triplex. I'm wrestling with how nice to make the renovation. Many have told me that if you make it nice & rent it out to students (with parents co-signing) they'll take care of the place. Even the police in my area have said that the student houses in our town are quite easy to deal with.  There's a huge wave of students being added into the community so it won't be a problem getting students to rent it out. I want to attract a tenant that looks at the place & sees it as something to be taken care of. Along the same lines, you make it a little bit nicer than what others are offering & you can charge a reasonable amount more for it. The house is notorious in the community for being a hub of drug activity; dealing & using. So I'm trying to change it up for the neighbours as well.

The question of how nice to make it has to deal with:

a) its for students (most likely)

b) its in a neighbourhood where there are a lot of rentals, but not many nice ones. 

I obviously don't want to put more into it than what I'll get out of it for rents and/or resale value  (for when I eventually sell)

comments or otherwise?