After weeding through all the dozens of people who called and visited the place, we finally got it down to 1 couple. In the end, couldn’t ask for a better family at this point. Here are the pluses that made selection easy:

1. They are currently playing $1400/month for rent in the area and are in good standing with their current landlord. This means that they would easily be able to cover the $700/month we are charging. This was a BIG plus.
2. They had no problem paying for the deposit in one payment. I don’t mind working with people on it, but it adds more to the relationship beyond the renter using our property. A smaller plus.
3. They wanted to make sure that the lease allowed for them to purchase the property within a year. I don’t want to be in the land lording business so I would have preferred to sell the property, but couldn’t find a buyer. The fact that they are looking to buy sooner than later is another big plus.
4. They were a dual income family with both incomes able to comfortably cover the rent. This means reduced risk for them missing a payment should one or the other go out of work.
5. They are putting up horses on the property. This gives them a good reason to become attached to the place and increases the likelihood they will buy it (or rent it longer). Either way is good for me.

Hopefully, they will work out and we aren’t seeing people different than they really are. But we have done our due diligence and feel pretty comfortable with who we ended up with.

Since there is little to no interest in purchasing the property, we are looking heavily into renting. We have the signs in the yard and the ad in the paper. The response has been much more positive. All told, we have probably had ~50 people come through the house in the past 3 or 4 days. It has been busy.

It is interesting the different situations the people have been in who have come through here. Some are young and prepping for marriage. Others own horses but not property to put them on. Others yet are moving to the country from big cities. But somehow you have to weed them down based on what they tell you, what they don’t tell you, what they put on their application, and what they don’t put on the application.

The most important consideration for us is building a relationship with the renters that will ultimately end with them purchasing it. So we are leaning pretty heavily on a Lease with Purchase option agreement. They it would work is they sign a 3 or 4 year lease paying a monthly rent. They would have the option at the end of the lease to purchase the house at the price we would sell it today. There is an additional item in the lease that would reduce that purchase price if any permanent improvements are made to the property. So far the response to that kind of arrangement has been pretty positive.

Another consideration in this process is the opportunity to help some people out. This isn’t the prime selection criteria but it certainly is a factor in my mind. Take this situation–2 candidates are perceived as having the same rental reliability with verifiable history as given on the application. One candidate is recovering from some poor choices resulting from a previous divorce and the other just doesn’t have money for a down payment to a house right now. The second would probably be evaluated as the less risky of the two candidates, but the first could probably use a little consideration to aid her situation. This does open up the potential to be taken advantage, but just because it is harder to weigh that situation does not mean it should not be considered. It’s tough, but this is an important part of my decision making process.