They want someone who is physically local that can be responsible for issues that come up.If you are required to hire a property manager anyways, might as well just pay them to do the tenant placement.  

My client's have been happy with the draw process and response times as well.

Sure it does. but depending on who the celebrity is/was.....That's why so many little hotels, boarding houses, vacation rentals, etc..... feature this in their advertising.And in some cases, you will not get more money, but you will get more guests.A little while ago, I went to Tombstone AZ and stayed in 'The first boarding house in Tombstone'....really cool place but kinda small and, well....old feeling.

If so, you should also look into the insurance requirements during construction (both builder risk as well as the GC's policy, but particularly the GC policy).

I think tax benefits should be secondary to buying something that would work well as a STR.I would recommend you consult a tax professional to see what possible tax benefits you could receive from buying this STR.

Campus housing has been under tremendous headwinds for the last 4 years.These properties were sold with extremely aggressively optimistic projections, as well as a price that represented a significant premium to fair market value.So sorry to hear about your investment.

This Wikipedia page gives different wall types and how well they block sound.  

I think we're priced pretty well when looking at comps now, and we did one price reduction.

We do well with ours in Denver and Colorado Springs, for instance.

I've done a lot of value add as well so that helped speed up the process.