Are their listings detailed with good quality photos?

The people I know in this area do not want to own any homes and this can improve the quality of tenant at times as they are looking at it as their home.    

As long as the cars aren't all on blocks, then that's not really an indicator of neighborhood quality. 

They clearly had expenses thinner than 50% in most cases so my assumption was, with a quality product (full renovation of all the big capex things: roof, mechanicals, plumbing), and in a decent area with good tenants, you can safely lower the expense projections under 50%.

The homes show you the quality of the work.

Some of the challenges I’ve seen here are in the early stages of building a reputation of quality student rentals and then keeping your pipeline of upcoming students full for when turnovers occur. 

Finding quality and reliable contractors.

I believe if I put between 30k-50k into quality upgrades (I do most of the work myself) I could possibly sell for 500k or more.

Thus far Airbnb is saying they will not refund the guest as it does not quality for their extenuating circumstances, hopefully they do not reverse course on that decision.My understanding is right now the only valid CV cancellation is if you are travelling from overseas from China or a couple of other countries and your flight was cancelled, or if you are military or medical and and being called to service (existing interpretation of the special circumstances policy as they explained it). 

The best way to vet them is to see if the deals they are sending your way are quality or not.