The small players are struggling to maintain rents unless you are extremely close to campus. 

But what I struggle with is that I am at such an early stage in my education that I don't have these folks at my disposal yet. 

Any energy you spend on this will be easier than a drawn out eviction, so figure out the barriers and help them solve them.You may struggle to find quality tenants and folks that won't smoke in units, I had to really adjust my expectations over the years. 

If you want to scale things up a bit, you might think about mailing to some of the new motivated owner occupied lists such as:Seniors with Long-time Ownership: often ready to downsize or transition to assistance.Homeowners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS): Struggling financially and likely ready to cash in on their asset.Both these categories have additional advantages in that they probably don’t haven’t been updated and may have deferred maintenance.

I think that's something that I will struggle with for a long time.

I plan on meeting with a lender next month.You are right, seeing how much I qualify for will help me narrow my search.I guess I’m struggling with whether to rent my current house out and buy another home,live in it and then rent that out (house hack)Or if I should just buy an investment property, see how it goes and then move out of my current home when I am more financially stable. 

My parents have struggled with this for a long time. 

The property details are more important than my details, so my credit score, income, and other assets are unlikely to impact loan terms for the better.A commercial loan under or near 1M is considered a small commercial loan, and I may struggle to find a loan provider.I've been reading that commercial multifamily between 5 to 10 units adds a lot of headache without really leveraging any economies of scale.

The advantage of single hung is that the top pane does not move on single hung which means that your idiot tenants won't struggle with closing the window when the top pane moves down a tiny bit.

MATH, MATH, and MATH this is something many people struggle with (like me), make sure you take the time to understand it and practice it for the exam!