Kevin to specifically answer your question as to the why, it's a combination of other work travel which puts me in FL anyway, the time I spend in Florida each year for work and family, and my love of the area. 

Traveling doctors and nurses often need temporary housing near the hospital. hospitals are so busy now with covid it might  be a good idea to look around large hospitals at this time then shif to student housing when the schools recover.

The day when the escrow papers were signed, including the title, I was traveling for business so I couldn't be present.

Split up the money into four parts. 1. layered CD's you won't lose but little gain like 1.5-2% 2. buy 10 individual stocks of products that you understand and believe can grow in the coming economy- tiny houses, ADU's, bleach, beer can production, tents, cheap motor homes, grocery chains, you know the stuff... avoid retail, big box, restaurant chains, travel 3. use for down payment to buy AFTER Halloween another rental in different market - college town is good idea. 4. pay down with the remainder

I work remotely for a company in NYC and it's easy to travel to the city when needed... plus $250k will buy you a small-to-medium house up here... even less if you go to one of the outer villages (I'm buying a 4/1.5 2048 sqft house with a 20x40 garage for $132K in Groton right now), but the population does get less diverse going out that far. 

I'm thinking of the incident where California banned state travel to Texas and someone (Abbott I think) responded with "thats fine, we'll just keep accepting all the businesses that are running away from your oppressive tax policy".

From what I can tell, if you are in Vegas for work a lot, going to trade shows, meetings etc, then this could be a way to offset your travel costs.

My partner and I are currently traveling and when we arrive back home in a month we are thinking about investing in a rental property.

I've had a mix of business professionals, travel nurses, and grad students, and most are pretty clean and respectful of shared spaces.One of the important things is to draft a clear rental agreement or house manual for people to follow.

Since I travel anyway I'm fine expanding my search to the entire US rather than my local area (I'm near the midwest right now).I have about 130-170k in stocks that I could pull for a deal like this.