Managing prospective tenant inquiries

[Scott Wang]

I'm a newbie with 3 single-family homes in rural Wisconsin (towns around here have populations under 2,000).  I'm in the process of finding a tenant for one of the homes.  I stuck an ad on craigslist and quickly received 25+ inquiries.  Rental inventories around here are very low and a lot of people are looking.

My question is how do I sort and manage these inquiries?  I have shown the house to 3 of them and have minor details on a couple more, but the only thing I have on the remaining 20 interested parties is their phone number.

When you are looking for a tenant, how do you manage those inquiries?  Do you give everyone that applies a fair shot or do you select the first good applicant you see and tell everyone else sorry?