Parents are buying homes in college towns so their kids can live rent-free. Sometimes, they’re even cashing out big.

Parents are buying homes for college kids instead of paying room and board or renting off-campus.

College towns can be good investment opportunities, but being your child’s landlord isn’t easy.

“Sometimes you do get those late-night calls,” said Candice St. Pierre, a mom-turned-landlord.

When Candice St. Pierre’s college-aged daughter determined that dorm living wasn’t for her, she didn’t object. In fact, she was glad.

“Dorms are not cheap,” St. Pierre, 53, told Business Insider. “I knew that once you paid for the housing, you also are required to do the meal plans. So we didn’t even consider the dorms.”

For her daughter’s first two years at the Savannah College of Art & Design, St. Pierre paid $1,000 a month for her to live in apartments off-campus. But she got tired of co-signing leases and taking chances on shady college-affiliated apartments where security deposits would vanish and she’d be hit with inexplicable move-out fees.

In 2024, St. Pierre took matters into her own hands and bought a four-bedroom Victorian home in Midtown Savannah, Georgia, for $485,000. She said it was the most expensive house she’d ever bought.

She converted the living room into another bedroom, so with four other girls staying there, she collects $3,500 a month in rent. Her mortgage is $3,494, she said, so her daughter essentially stays for free.

St. Pierre believes she made the right call for her daughter and hopes the purchase will be a good investment.

“I think my chances are pretty good that I will get a profit off of it whenever I do decide to sell,” she said. “I may hold onto it and rent it out to someone else, and rent it as a whole house. Maybe I might use it as a vacation home for a little while.”

The rising costs of college tuition and room and board and the growing popularity of real estate side-hustles has led more entrepreneurial-minded parents to try their hand at the landlord game, buying property for their children that they can then rent out to other roommates to cover the mortgage. Though many parents hope to profit when they eventually sell, even breaking even is a good deal.

An analysis of 121 colleges by Mortgage Research Network showed that some college towns bear more fruit than others. Out of the schools analyzed, buying a home was less expensive than room and board in 23 of the 121 markets, many of which are small cities or rural towns in the South. For example, parents with children attending Temple University in Philadelphia, the school that ranked highest on the list for the most savings, could save $29,742 in a three-year period compared to paying $50,904 for room and board.