When I was a student I had a different viewpoint on this, but it all depends on the people, and putting everyone in one bucket is rarely accurate.

Kids whose parents sign their leases and pay their rents will almost never fail to pay rent, and if you do have a problem, their parents are almost always going to save their asses in fear of breaching contract. At least here in Texas, contracts and tenancy laws greatly favor property owners. As you can imagine, there’s the risk of having people damage walls / floors / plumbing, but in my experience that stuff is mostly trivial to repair and that is what damage and security deposits are partially intended to cover. When I was a student I repaired drywall at every place I lived, some minor, some major, and was never charged a dime at move-out. Most new apartments have a standard procedure of repainting between every tenant.

Renter laws in Canada sound very different than Texas. The tenant acts tend to favor the renter I've the landlord in almost all cases. You can debate if this is good or bad, but being a residential landlord is not the same as commercial property

Good luck repairing the level 5 drywall finish these mansions tend to have.

Being a landlord is a choice. Discrimination based on age is a thing. If you don't like certain types of people, you can choose not to take advantage of people with literal rent-seeking behavior, then stop being a landlord and sell your property.

Age is a protected class. But being a college student is not. I wouldn't rent to a college student/s regardless of their age.

That's kinda like saying "Age is a protected class. But being on a fixed income isn't"...

You can filter out just about all motley groups of college students by refusing a cosigner. There are plenty of other trivial filters to choose from that succeed in court.

> then stop being a landlord and sell your property.

Or they could just do what they are doing now, which is completely legal.

Hackernews needs a bot to correct people every time they incorrectly use the term "rent-seeking". Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with real estate. I see this term misused on a daily basis here.

Rent-seeking doesn't refer to specifically real estate, but renting out a piece of property that you own is rent seeking, as you are using your existing wealth to acquire new wealth without creating any wealth.