You are allowed to pick your renters ANY WAY YOU WANT if you are not discriminating on the basis of the protected classes under the Fair Housing laws, which are:
race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status, or disability
or unless you are in a state or locality with more-restrictive laws, in which case those must be followed.
I don’t know of any law prohibiting discrimination based on what your major is in college.
However, I would not assume that pre-law/pre-med students are any better tenants than others. That is probably a fallacy.
It is actually fairly easy to screen out college students by requiring a large deposit (make sure it’s the maximum permitted by law), requiring a co-signer (parent) since most of them have no credit history or rental history, having restrictive rules than they would not want to follow (e.g. large fines for any noise/trash complaints, etc etc) and by only offering a 12 month lease.
However, you may also find yourself repelling many of your prospective tenants. It’s a fine line.
Posted by Mark Fabich on February 07, 2001 at 23:43:48:
Hi Everyone –
I live in a College town – how can I maximize this to my advantage if I’m just starting out in REI? I can’t afford to have my first property trashed…
Should I just target my rentals to pre-law/pre-med students? If someone wants to rent my property, and I feel that they would be bad renters, what would I need to back up my “gut feeling” so that I don’t get sued for discrimination? Should I make them sign a 12 month lease, so that I get to keep their deposit when they have to break the contract and go home for the summer (a few apartment complexes here have 9 month leases, most have 12)?
anybody with that mind set is more picky and more likely to litigate.
I seem to remember a case here in california where a builder refused to sell to an attorney for the reasons I just stated, and of course the attorney sued. The court ruled in favor of the builder! Of course the attorney appealed…don’t know what happened after that.
Point is, attornies can be a real pain in the a$$. They have their place, like CRE books and tapes, but not as renters.
Now pre-med might be a good idea, they’re probably too busy to fight with a landlord.