MIRIAM Hanrahan and her twin sister Leanne had been in St Patrick’s teacher training college in Dublin for a year, paying €100 each a week rent, when their parents, who live in Wexford, decided to invest in a three-bedroom house in Drumcondra where they could live. Three years ago, the couple paid €540,000 for a renovated three-bedroom house on Richmond Road which Mary Hanrahan, the twins’ mother, describes as “warm and homely”.

They had already put two older children through college in Dublin, and had been looking for a long-term investment property. The two girls found three friends to share, then paying about €320 a week each in rent.

Their parents vetted the friends, and set up standing orders for rent payment. Utility bills are paid at the end of the year – “I photocopy the bills and divide by five,” says Mary.

There’s potential for hassle if the children-tenants are made responsible for everything in the house, but for the Hanrahans, it has worked out fine: the girls’ dad goes up to do the garden, and Miriam says “we probably would have cleaned up a bit more, would have felt a bit more responsible”.

Her mother adds “I lived in flatland – we don’t interfere, it’s not good to be on their back.” So far, there’s been no hassle, no wild parties: “our neighbour there says she doesn’t even know they’re there”.

Miriam will finish college next year but her parents will go on renting, probably to students. Mary Hanrahan believes that long-term, they will have saved money by buying.

Deciding whether to buy to accommodate your students obviously depends on your income – and perhaps your willingness to become a landlord. There are lots of variables – even if you have two or three children, they may not end up going to college in the same city, or you might buy something on the wrong side of the city, or indeed, they might drop out.

So it makes sense to pursue this option only if you want the property long-term, either for your own use or as a buy-to-let investment. And although credit will be harder to get this year, house prices have fallen – so it’s not the worse time to think about it.

You’ll likely need income from other tenants to help pay the mortgage – and to go on renting after your children have gone. The key to success is, as always, location. Sean and Mary (not their real names), a Co Meath couple, bought a good, solid three-bed house off Collins Avenue in north Dublin in 2001, when their son had just finished his first-year living on campus in DCU. He was following a four-year course, and his sister planned to go to DCU three years later.

They paid £220,000 and are still renting it out seven years later, although both their son and daughter have now finished college. It was their first property investment and they are pleased that they chose to buy: Sean says they’ll never be in a position where they can’t rent it out: it’s five minutes’ walk from Beaumont hospital, 20 minutes to DCU, several other third level colleges as well as close to the airport and bus routes. They say it makes sense really as a long-term investment of at least 10 or more years.

Currently, they are charging four women students – three nurses and a fourth-year in nearby mater Dei – €1,700 a month. That’s €425 a month each and each gets a room of their own for this, because the diningroom has been converted into a bedroom.

And although it’s hands-on – Mary takes care of regular maintenance, like getting windows cleaned, repainting and so on – it’s nearly always been a positive experience. They’ve hardly ever had hassle, either when their own children were sharing with friends or since.

At the beginning, they had their son and four of his friends, with the rent from the four tenants nearly covering mortgage repayments. Like the Hanrahans, they set up standing orders for rent, and their son collected for the other bills. “I think the fact that our son was there helped – none of them abused the place,.”

In fact, most of a changing cast of tenants proved to be good around the house, helping with the garden, fixing things as needed.

And far from giving or getting hassle from neighbours, “they became like a granny and grand-dad to our students, bringing them, in for cups of tea and so on”.