One of my favourite topics, Mitchum (tenants). Having managed some large rent rolls in my time (some in excess of 2,000 units) I partly agree with your assertion. The general consensus among property managers was, and still is, that circa 70/80% of tenants will respect the house/apartment and pay the rent on time (or close to), while the other 20/30% are trouble on legs. I've had the latter shoot their neighbor dead over carpark disputes, trash the premises, start fires (intentionally), set up gambling dens, drug houses and refuse to pay rent without reasonable cause - etc, etc. I liken it to managing the biggest hotel on earth. You see the best and worst of humanity and all their foibles. Its always the same: the few that give the majority a bad name. In the old days (70s), when the bad tenants revealed themselves, we were able to employ a variety of tactics to remove them - sometimes lawful and some not, when dealing with the worst of the worst. Then, in the late 70s, early 80s the tenancy laws were changed - some reasonable, some not, which made it difficult to remove bad tenants. And then came the Tenancy Tribunal, which complicated matters and made the system more complex.
All that said, the problems never went away. Bad tenants are mostly immune from retribution when they destroy property or refuse to pay rent. The old adage - you can't get blood out of a stone comes to mind. Any legal avenues of restitution are thwart by costs and time delays with no guarantee of success. And in most cases the offender has no money by which he or she can pay the order. Or they just disappear. And Mitchim is right - it doesn't matter how well a prospective tenant is vetted, because some (the bad ones) will slip through the noose 20/30% of the time.
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