Tenant screening is covered by app fees and the additional profits from that should cover office supplies, etc. in my opinion.They have had one eviction since they purchased and decided to maintain a clean environment to have 2 cops live for free and thus have not had one bit of crime.  

However, it's a little tough in the current environment.  

It makes for an easier environment to invest in

They assume that somehow shuffling around their external environment (their friends) will somehow improve their internal environment (themselves).  

Furthermore,  the location of rooming house are usually tightly regulated.On top of that, conventional lenders tend to turn-away from rooming house, particularly in the environs of a university.Where you have kitchens in both the upper and lower unit and have fire-separated the ceiling of the lower unit have you formally separated them into a duplex (as a way to avoid an occupancy by-law)?

Crap for 1 to 15k per house if you have to just abandon one because it did not work no biggee.. you have lost next to nothing monetarily. keep the ones that work throw away the garbage let them go for tax's.If your sitting in CA or AU or GB  or other foreign countries and you think these cheap homes are going to make you rich.. then your just perpetuating the greater fool theory in my mind... and the end of the day simple logic has to dictate.. if houses on the open market were any investor  experienced or not can purchase them for 1 to 5k  well then there is a reason.. and there is a reason that in LA or SF or PDX or SEA  or New York or Boston or other prime markets that values are where they are at.. supply demand and ability to pay for the asset.Detroit bottom line just needs to retrench.. if its only 700k pop now and declining and there were housing stock for double that.. it does not take a genius to understand there is a gross over supply and the better owners or tenants are not going to live in the roughest and most dangerous areas of the city they will flee to safer more stable environs because there are massive amounts of homes that can be bought in nice areas for 100k and under.

This favors the conventional loan because when you refi down the road, you'll be stuck in the interest rate environment that exists down the road, whereas you'll keep today's rate with the conventional.  

And if so, how is the environment?

Due to the current market environment, the 1% rule is hard to come by, much less the 2% rule (does that even exist in Atlanta?).

I have heard of incidents like this in where a worker/contractor, either operating as a DBA contractor or as a direct employee, requires that the owner is responsible for providing a working environment that is free from working hazards.