Very interesting... The thing with rentals is, in most jurisdictions, if someone goes more than 30 days past due, you can start eviction proceedings. Those are something almost all property management companies look for before renting.
One one hand, since credit reports don't report past due payments before 30 days, I'd be hard to get a late payment without an eviction. On the other, I wonder if it would be an easy way for them to report an amount owed for lease fines or cleaning/repairs over a security deposit upon move out? I would think normally a couple hundred bucks isn't worth filing a judgement and they might just write it off, but if they can just report it for free?
One last thought, how would the FICO modeling even take rentals history into account? Like a mortgage? or would they modify the scoring system specifically for something like this? I find the later unlikely unless it became the norm to report.