I got an e-mail from Noah who was interested in buying property in a college town and renting to college students and was asking for some advice on doing this. While I'm not an expert in Real Estate, I do own one rental property and am currently working with a Realtor to buy my second rental property. I'm also currently looking to some properties down in Charleston, Illinois near Eastern Illinois University so I figured I'd chime in and offer some advice. If any of you are experienced in real estate, or even better if you own rental properties in a college town please drop a comment below and share some of your wisdom with us. I'm not sure if all states are like this but at least in Illinois one of the perks of renting out houses in college towns is as opposed to having one lease for the entire house, the way leases are typically structured each student has their own lease. So basically instead of just saying this house is $500, if the house has 4 bedrooms Tom pays $200, Jim pays $200, Tony pays $200, and Nick pays $200 so your getting $800 in rent as opposed to just $500, you tend to get a bit more renting to college students. Another perk of structuring leases this way is if there's damages or if someone doesn't pay you have 4 different people to go after. One other thing I noticed in my experience renting is that most landlords required your parents to co-sign for you, I assume they figure if there's damages or you don't pay your folks have more money and they can go after them so as a landlord doing this protects you a bit more. Another benefit of renting in college towns, especially more rural college towns is properties tend to be very cheap. In my college town I'm currently looking at properties between say $19,000 and about $35,000 so depending upon how much you have in savings you could potentially even buy these properties cash and not even have to deal with mortgages. It also make the barrier to entry a bit lower. My advice to Noah is to do an FHA loan, FHA loans are more forgiving on credit, which doesn't sound like it's an issue for Noah, however the other perk is the down payment required is only 3.5% as opposed to the typical 10% or 20% downpayment, or in the case of investment properties sometimes as much as 25%. FHA loans allow you to get up to a 4 unit, however I would suggest maybe starting with a duplex or two flat, renting one unit and living in the other so you can essentially live for free. Continue saving and continue putting away some of that money your making and then either use that money to buy your next property or use the equity you've built in your home to buy the next property. Do you guys have any advice for getting into real estate or the landlord game? Do any of you have rentals in college towns? Drop a comment below and share some knowledge with us...