A college student getting an engineering degree should consider different approaches, even if he decides to deploy some/all of the inheritance in real estate, than a high school dropout working a minimum wage job. 

Heck, some day I may even be a client of yours looking to purchase a place near the U if my son decides to go there when he graduates high school, LOL.

Here's a little bit of history:                                                                                    In the first half of the 20th Century Waco was a booming city on it's way to be just as large of a city as Austin or even Dallas, but in 1957 a catastrophic tornado hit Waco, destroying it's entire downtown area.

Invest the $550,000 in a mutual fund such as S&P 500 or VTSAX with a 10-year history average annual return of 12% 2.

The experience goes with track record - do they have a history of doing this and being successful as well as having failures.

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?

They signed a 3 year contract and have an excellent rental history. 

I'd like to keep the house for long-term appreciation since it's in a good school district and has low crime.

Gwinnett County has fantastic school systems so rental demand is strapping. 

Will some people invest, yes - but if you had two of the same products and one that was doing it the way it has been done for 100 years and one with the new technology for investing, the people with the $ typically will choose the old school way and not want to be caught up in the next FTX. 3.