The real power of single family residential comes with stable, consistent markets that chug along, have good rental base/demand and growth potential. 

If you decide to pursue this option be sure to EXPLICITLY spell out how the maintenance of the buildings will be handled as these types of facilities tend to be hard on property from my experience.

The contract was a simple 3 page one and I wrote this in.Also, it is a single family being rented as a rooming house (which is technically not legal here).

There's other items such as this where it may be helpful to talk to a CPA/EA for a little tax planning, especially since you'll likely get caught up in the passive activity loss limitations if taking bonus on a single rental property as I often see.It's also useful to mention that even if you do the cost seg study (I'm assuming you're doing one to be talking about this), you'll still benefit from accelerated depreciation in the form of shorter useful lives on the assets where you received bonus from.

My wife and I own a single-family home in a top school district.

I'm only looking at duplex's or single family at the moment.

If that's not an option, you're looking at a minimum of 15% down for a single family investment property.If you haven't been working, you'll want to wait until you have a 2-year employment history UNLESS the job you have after college ties into what you're going to college for. 

Ensure the sublease is explicitly permitted in a written agreement with your friend and aligns with local STR laws.

I've never had a single complaint from any of my STR guests regarding not providing streaming services.Also, be sure to set that expectation up front in your listing - let guests know you provide high speed internet and have smart TV's so they need to bring their own log-ins if they want to use any streaming services.

I have a couple of single family homes in Cincinnati, but most of my portfolio is in Columbus.