I've owned student housing as far as 4.1 miles from the University of South Carolina campus.In my experience, the only reason kids would live that far away is cheap rent.

It may be more worthwhile to find someone who has reasonable fees for their service as my two cents.I hope this helps in some way! 

This might give a one-time (non-scalable) boost to cash flow, offer multiple value-add options, and allow the house-hacker peace of mind, via the assumed mortgage, in long-term breakeven or positive cash flow in the event that the value-add plans end up not being executed, and/or the person has to move out, and rent by the room or STR become unavailable for some reason at a future date.

But I am looking for a local CPA.I see no compelling reason for that. 10 years ago, most of the local clients of my firm liked to come to our Houston office.

This triples your headache.BE the voice of REASON to your friend. 

There is no reason you couldn’t do the same… so why let them make the money and give up the control?  

For example if one partner brings the 20% down payment and the other will do the labor for renovations then what would be a reasonable split be.

Have done some preliminary research and will do a deep dive, just wanted to see what folks thought of there were any obvious reasons why or why not or any markets similar that I should be considering.

I got a reasonable discount on the purchase price, and it has made me a good amount of money over the years.

There are a bunch of reasons people sell a property.