Renting My Truck Camper

toedtoes wrote:

mkirsch wrote:

RetiredRealtorRick wrote:

toedtoes wrote:
Expecting a specific behavior out of people due to their career choice is a guaranteed disaster.

Ask for references, including current and past landlords, and base your choices on actual past behavior.

Sounds like a response from someone who has never been deeply involved in the rental industry. Understandable.

You don't even have to be involved in the rental industry to know how meaningless references can be. I've lost count of the number of people my company has hired based on GLOWING references only to find out how worthless and clueless they really are.

There is a way to utilize references. First, you ask the prospective renter specific questions regarding their prior renting. Questions like: have you ever had a structural/plumbing/electrical problem while renting? If so, what location and how did you handle it? Have you ever failed to pay rent on time? If so, what were the circumstances? Then, you call the landlord for that property and ask if that is what happened. This lets the landlord discuss a specific incident rather than just being asked to give an opinion. Most landlords, and employers, hesitate to make general comments about someone - sometimes because they don't to be mean, but more often because they don't want to get into a case of slander. By focusing on a specific incident, the risk of slander is very much minimized. It also allows you to catch the potential renter in a lie - after which you can remove them from the running.

And for as bad as a reference may be, using career choice as a factor is even more useless.

The military itself has slightly better odds because of the "control" a commanding officer has on their subordinates. But that is not a guarantee - military personnal can and do make bad renters and their behaviors are not always corrected.

As for any other career, there is no "this is a good career to which to rent" or "this is a bad career to which to rent". Lawyer A may be a horrid tenant, Lawyer B may be a great tenant. Musician F may be a great tentant, Musician L may be a great tenant.

Just out of curiosity, how many active duty military personnel have YOU rented to over the years? My wife and I did some quick figuring this evening -- for us it has been somewhere in the 400-450 range, spanning about 18 - 20 years. We used to own a LOT of rental homes, and actually purchased homes that we could rent for an amount equivalent to what our tenants received as a monthly housing allowance. And frankly, it worked quite well for us. If you've rented to anywhere near that amount of military families, I will fully accept your experience and input you provided as being valid, at least for you, but if not, then all I'm seeing is input irrelevant to the OP's questions, and frankly holds no water at all relative to the information and suggestion I am offering to the OP.