My name is Ammar Mehmood and I am currently a senior at Illinois State University.

According to a study by the University of Florida and Syracuse University's Whiteman School of Management, 1031 exchanges account for 6% of ALL commercial real estate sales volume, to the tune of an estimated $2billion - $4billion in annual tax offsets.

There's a university, a college, opp head quarters, hydro one is building a grid control centre which is projected to inject 200-300 million into the local economy in the short term.

There's a large public university in my hometown, with a lot of opportunity for good cash flow on student housing "multifamily" units.

Additionally, you can serve much more than just traveling nurses since the hospitals are also near universities and attractions.

My town has a Division 2 University that brings in about 8K students per semester.

My initial thought with buying this condo was that I could house hack it while in graduate school and rent it easily (it's located near University of Chicago) once I moved away.

@Joel Unick, it's 5-6 blocks west of Drake University right near University.Des Moines is small, so if you commit to watching the active, pending, and sales data from zillow or realtor dot com, you will be able to see the areas that are turning.Also if you find a realtor that will share with you the trends and data for the area (I'm happy to do this for you, just let me know) you can find how many cash buyers in different areas of the city. 

I am currently a Junior at Texas A&M University.

After that, any excess money can go into real estate/index funds/ indexed universal life insurance.