The location is about 5 blocks from a university so i'm thinking of renting out to students - or perhaps the school itself , they have bought up as much property as they can already.

have any of you looked at student housing?

Prepare for trouble getting him out, so you aren't blindsided when you go to take possession on the date he is to be out, and he is still there with all his stuff.But hey, you will get to learn how to do an eviction! 

We manage a large student population and they have tried like hell to default (parents included).

Low leverage = sleeping easy at night and not freaking out when the world dumps a financial or biological pandemic on you.My personal residence is 100% paid off, we have no credit cards, no car loans, no student loans, etc and are "personally" debt free. 

I always tell my students that they need to raise a larger amount than what they think they’ll need.

At the time i was relaying on peer advice that they cant withhold rent for such things and i felt i had a strong case for eviction. 1 of the women agreed to move out through mediation, the other we ended up in front of a judge and she won possession of the property. 

Specifically, I am interested in room by room student rentals around universities.

I'd love to be able to leave keys in the contractor's possession so that if neither the tenant, my husband, or myself could meet them they could access the property.

Our city has a Downtown Development Authority in place to encourage these types of projects, and the university near my desired location recently added new and bigger dormotories and added a new student center, so I'm sure they've upgraded surrounding utilities for those projects.