Please know, I recognize this is an academic discussion (for now) and am just interested in hearing and debating other landlords’ opinions on the matter.

My wife and I just found out that we will be returning to our alma mater Virginia Tech next academic year and are super excited!

What subject is/are your academic degree(s) in?

If you have an engineering degree a MBA will be pretty easy academically.  

For example, alot of rentalproperties for buy and hold purposes will create losses for tax purposes(even if positive cash flow) primarily due to depreciation, so the above mightbe more academic if you're running losses for tax purposes while you're holdingit.

In the Boston market, most leases turn over Sept 1 to sync with the academic calendar and seasons so if you aren't getting in position by early summer you might find yourself struggling to lease up vacancies in the fall.

Randomize the order, find some accepted cultural markers for coffee table books and decorations to switch out (when academics have done "resume research," they use names that are 90% one group or the other -- "Jake Smith" is generally a white dude, "Jamar Smith" is generally a black dude, so when Jake gets 50% more callbacks with an identical resume, there's good reason to suspect foul play). 

Just because the mathematics make sense to buy with OPM it does not mean it is wise to do so.The numerous comments around this thread are there because the people commenting, me included, are trying to say to you that whilst academically the mathematics work and in fact you could build an even bigger funded model by using even more creative financing techniques, it doesn't mean you should.

Ask a few different academic advisors between the different colleges.

Suffice to say though through a more hands on marketing/leasing process and learning how to create very professional looking virtual tours we were able to lease up 100% of our units for the 2020-2021 academic year.