It really comes down to preference.

I personally would prefer to do my deals with a private lender at 20% rather than a hard money lender, but you need a track record with real estate before you can attract the attention of one. 

I know a number of individuals whose leases reflect the school year.  

I prefer to have answers before someone asks the question.

roommates are preferred to a family imo, and in that location you’ll get good techie tenants all day long.

But of course, there can always be a black swan event.Home prices are affected by human decision making (individuals, Federal Government policy, Federal Reserve policy, local economy, etc, etc, etc...), which is not necessarily very predictable or logical, so I would take macro price trends with a grain of salt.

I'm seeing property managers struggle to keep up, let alone private individuals.

If I can’t get two separate tax IDs then no one will be willing to purchase the houses individually since there is no guarantee the owner of the other house will pay his portion of the property taxes even if the tax bill were some how split proportionately.

My wife and I have just moved here from Savannah and would like to start buying rentals (preferably multi-family).  

@Brian Garrett, you have obviously never worked for a lender or been a Mortgage Broker as your comments above seem to scream lack of knowledge on this particular subject.Have one or more of your "Preferred" lenders join this discussion and let's see how they respond to some questions on this topic.Send them this thread and ask them to join the discussion so the investors here on BP can determine what is best.