Oak Ridge Rental Scene? (real estate, apartments, rentals)

[Rally_Point]

I'm considering buying some property in Oak Ridge, for investment purposes. My analysis so far is that Oak Ridge is a solid area. Property won't appreciate much but housing is relatively cheap ( at least the houses I'm looking at, remember these are rental properties), and you don't have the crime and other issues related to lower/lower middle income neighborhoods you find in a lot of urban areas. Not to mention schools in the area are solid, though I doubt there's a lot of families looking for 1 or 2 Br apartments. I could be wrong tho...

I'm trying to get a gauge on the rental market though. Will I be able to find decent tenants that will pay rent on time, not trash my place and use it for a meth lab? I've talked to some real estate agents and they say it shouldn't be a problem, in fact they said it should be easy. Of course they're in real estate so I don't know how biased they are. Does anyone have feedback? I'm just worried that I'm going to buy a place then have trouble renting it, even if I price the rent competitively.

Thanks

[knoxnut]

If you don't mind doing month to month or short term rentals, you'll probably get a fair bit of interest from post-docs working at the lab. And if you can do it at a middle range rate for a decent place, as there doesn't seem to be many rentals that fall into that category, at least not last time I looked which was a few years ago. Most rentals seemed to be at the high (900$+) or low (<$500) end, and typically the rental conditions reflect the price. A lot of post docs just want a decent place to stay near work, doesn't have to be fancy, but they don't want something run down and constantly needing maintenance.