Calibrate your budget accordingly.

This is a great area for investment and I think long term prospects will be solid - my gut tells me to pass on this particular deal and wait for things to re-calibrate before moving forward with another purchase. 

Re-calibrate and move on.

But amid coordinating a move which is like a top 3 stressor in life , your best interests may not be in the front of their mind, or they may subconsciously have re-calibrated what "move-in ready" looks like in their own mind.

Student rentals can cash flow extremely well, but require very high calibre management skills to scale. 

I was hoping it would be in at least in the mid-teens IRR but it would be good to calibrate those expectations with what you typically expect from your build outs?

So if the economic vacancy rate (including skips, etc.) is 40% the rent is probably too high and thus you'd need to drop the rent to have a good calibration point.The 50% rule of thumb is far oversold on BP and is not the end-all-be-all.

Your story struck me oddly; forgive me if my free advice is too bold.Get calibrated on what's a good deal today, and go buy another rental!

Your BS Meter is not properly calibrated. 

A reasonable approach is to calibrate your payments to retire the notes over your working life, so that you'll have the full NOI available to you as retirement income.Most would advocate building in a vacancy reserve, and to buy assuming that you may need a property manager some day.