Our son we will help if he wants but won’t get the majority of our wealth.  

The numbers work, but it seems the issue was me as a borrower.

so...Again, lots of issues to work through when trying to use a single family into a "mini-dormitory."

Putting that kind of money in a rental is good idea I think, certainly on the major stuff like ac and furnace etc because you won't have to mess with it for 15+ years.

But there are some challenges; notably it's easy to rehab out all your equity and it can be hard to find contractors/vendors sometimes.Also, a small town can be particularly vulnerable if it's reliant on one major company if that company leaves.

I’ve been reading up on it as I have a water bill issue from before I bought the house.

And if so, what is the cost and prospect for collecting something, certainly not all, but something.My thinking is that if it shows up on their credit, it may hamper employment, car purchases, rental applications, education funding, etc and at some point they would need to pay me to go forward with some major life steps over the next 10 years.

One issue I've run into is that some collection agencies don't report tenants to the credit reporting agency, which is a huge missed opportunity.

That's one of many options.Once we figured out that the issue for us was more the lack of cash flow and less about the investment(we knew what we were going to spend either way) we paid 90% cash and that solved that problem. 

Just cause it's new construction, don't expect it to not have issues.