If you've ever been married and going to school at same time, chances are you've had wonderful experience of living in a multi family apartment or house. While most multi family properties are designed to allow peaceful coexistence of many families within their separate units, some apartments and houses give you feeling that you're actually living in one big family. Things like sharing one washer and dryer between five families means you never know whose underwear you'll have to fish out of washer before you start your own laundry. And a shared water heater means that now there's an incentive to early morning classes. Catching 'Cosby Show' every night at seven through your living room wall keeps you conveniently updated on latest goings-on in Huxtable home.

While living in multi family housing may not be an ideal situation for many of tenants, it can be a way to wealth for person collecting rent. My own landlord, also currently a college student, manages several properties for his wealthy, out-of-state family, collecting a handsome property manager's fee in process. Sure he had to evict people upstairs, replace roof, renovate unit next door, and perform other sundry tasks, but at end of month, he's got another $2500 in bank.

One time while he was fixing a clogged drain at our place I asked him how his family got to be so successful in multi family investment property business. He told me that his family hadn't always been housing barons they are today; after scraping together everything they had, even borrowing from extended family, they still had to take out a substantial loan from a local bank. With this they bought their first multi family property, an old duplex three blocks from university. Although location was great, being as close to campus as it was, purchase had depleted family's financial resources to point were they had to move into property while renting out other half. From this experience, my landlord's family gained some useful insight into multi family apartment financing.