We have an investment ppty in Townsville which we bought because our daughter is attending James Cook Uni there. Ours is set up as a share house – with each bedroom leased seperately. We put a seperate phone line into each room so they can each hook up inernet etc in their own name – did this after a big lesson was learned – We had a shared wireless network & they kept going over their internet usage, so they all agreed to go onto an open plan… 1st month the bill hit $2000… which of course they all said they hadn't used much & didn't want to pay.  The electricity is in my name & I divy it up according to how many days each tennant was renting (Probaby wouldn't do this if our daughter wasn't there) The house is fully furnished & we charge $135/wk rent, which seems to be the going rate for new, quality houses there. So utilities are extra with ours.

A relative also has a Share house set up investment ppty. Utilities were extra with theirs, He then needed to stay at the house periodically & came to an agreement with the tenants that they increased the rent by the amount of electrictiy they'd been paying
(so he didn't have to worry about mucking around working out who owed what electricity)……. The short & curly of this experience was that they went from hardly using electricity to running aircons etc constantly & the electricity bill nearly trippled. – big lesson there.

Speaking from experience I can say that if you are targeting Students, you won't get a 12mth lease out of them as a huge percentage go home for the Xmas break – late Nov to late Feb & don't want to pay rent during that period – majority of them are scared off if we ask for 6mths. Look for a house within walking distance of a major education facility or have public transport very close to your door. Parking at the ppty is also something to consider – we found a lot don't like to park their cars on the road.
 
We have a mix of 2 uni students & 2 workers. Leases are- 1 x 12mth, 1 x 6mth & the uni student originally took it for 6mths & then extended it for the 'uni year' (4th room is occupied by our daughter)

Share houses are a lot more work than straight rentals. You have more advertising to consider due to the number of & shorter term leases  -JCU has an accommodation area on their website that we use for free, but we ask each applicant were they saw our house & it's never been the uni website, always the paper. We try hard to get a good mix of age/personalities in the house (currently 19-25yr olds) & I'm probaby more picky due to the fact that our daughter is there.

Can't say that I'd run a share house again if we didn't have an 'insider' (daughter) there.

Hope I've given you some constructive insight

I'd really like to hear from some others that have share houses – or similar 'student' situations