The ads mostly say academic year. 

I want my niche to be tailored towards properties near academic universities and teaching hospitals on a national level.

After our conversation, I did look up and find an academic paper that generally found no consistent correlation between interest rates and cap rates.

@Nicholas Miller is correct: most of their money is coming from academic funding (not to mention mom and dad) so they are an excellent tenant pool in the right areas. 

If you put 30k down, then what you really want to know is how quickly you will be recovering this cash: NOI - Cost of Money = Cash FlowCF / Cash Investment = Cash on CashA lot of analysis that we do are important, but rather academic.

One thing to note that hedge funds / insto capital still account for a small % of the entire market so academically their buying shouldn't effect the prices beyond a sentiment point of view.

This is a kind of an academic interest, trying to gauge relationship between cities/ areas.

Your in an academic environment!

There are numerous academic studies that show valuations in the public markets tend to be a precursor for private market valuations.  

While we usually have our student properties re-rented in February/March for the next academic year, you can still find students over the summer - those who were accepted into a programme late, who's previous arrangements fell trough, or who simply didn't plan in advance.