How would you feel if strangers were coming into your home to look around. In your bedrooms, in your bathrooms.
Single-family homes are not like apartments. People who live in houses, in many instances, do so because they are looking for more privacy. Should they really have to sacrifice that privacy just because they pay rent as opposed to a mortgage?
Who are these renters? Are they a lower class? Do you perceive them as lower class?
Our tenants in Richardson are college-educated professionals; one has a master's degree, one is a paralegal. Other of our tenants are teachers, nurses, speech therapists.
People choose to rent for any number of reasons. Some of our tenants are former homeowners themselves; some are renting because they moved here from another state or others were divorced.
The point is that in many cases, our tenants are just like homeowners, in terms of educational achievement, income and their desire to be secure, safe and unbothered in their own homes.
Many feel uncomfortable about inspections and some are adamantly opposed. One of my tenants has told me that if the inspection goes forward, he'll move somewhere else once his lease is up.
Most of our tenants take great care of the properties; some even fertilize the yard every spring. Why do they have to be subject to interior inspections while those homeowners whose fence is falling apart aren't?