Question about 5bd 2ba SFH

[MATT WARDEN]

I think I can make this work, but I must admit that 5 bedrooms is a little out of my comfort zone and I fear I might not understand the dynamics well enough to analyze the deal. Specifically, I am worried that it would be difficult to rent, although I have heard that in some markets where 5bd units are scarce, they are very easy to rent. Here's the situation:

10 year old lender-owned 5 bedroom 2 bath SFH near a popular university branch campus (although it is largely a commuter branch campus). Here's what I'm thinking:

List: $53.9k
Buy: $48k
Debt service (48k@7%,30yr): $320/mo
Expected gross rent: $800-1000/mo (this is what I'm having trouble with)
NOI: $400-500/mo
Expected avg cash flow: $80-180/mo

The problem is that I am having trouble coming up with what I expect to be able to rent it out as. This is mainly because there are no real comparables. The only approach I can come up with is to ignore one of the bedrooms and comping as if it were a 4 bedroom. This might even be appropriate if 5 bedrooms turn out to be difficult to rent; I would have the option to market it as a 4 bedroom.

Any ideas on how to determine the expected rent? The $800 and $1k numbers was based on thinking if I rented it to a group of college students, which I would think would be easy to do for $200/person/mo (4 or 5 persons, respectively)...

I am trying to be extra conservative with my numbers since I'm slightly out of my element, but I wanted to run this by you guys in case I am completely not thinking of something.

Thanks,