which renter should I choose?

[Yunzhi Huang]

I am new landlord and just bought my very first investment property and feel so excited to put the house on Zillow to rent asap.  My local market for a similar house goes from $1700-1850, so I set mine at $1700 hoping to get renters faster and attract more people to apply.  (Seasoned landlords, please comment on whether this strategy is the good or not?)

I did end up with a lot of showing and among those have a couple good potential renters.  My husband and I came down to the last 2 options:

- a couple who's own house is under repair and insurance pays for temporary housing.  Their insurance is willing to pay $2100/mo but only willing to sign 6-mon lease with month-to-month options.  The couple has 2 young lovely kids (super adorable) and a big dog.  They said they could put their cat away.  Our winter is bad, and I am worried if they move out in Jan, I would have trouble to rent out again...

- an elder couple who just sold their house and needs to move out asap.  On the showing, they brought me the IDs, their house selling contract, the husband's senior management job contract and their marriage license, saying that's because they have different last names.  They even brought a ruler and measured rooms to see if their furniture could fit on the showing day.  But they also told me if I pull their credit score, don't be surprised that they have bad scores, which were credit debt for fixing up their old house.  But as soon as their house closes, they will pay off those debts immediately.  I did check the credit score (<430+ with about 70K credit card debts), and their job (it is a highly paid long-term job) and they told me they want to at least rent the house for 3 years.

Both couples love the house a lot, and both want to move in asap.  As a new landlord, I don't have much experience about how to choose between these two tenants.  Can seasoned landlords give me some advice?  Thanks in advance!

[David Stumpf]

Oral agreement.  Who knows, that fence might not be that important to them in 12 months.  What if they would rather have a deck for the same cost? It will be written into the lease renewal.  The idea is to make good tenants, long term tenants.  I don't like the idea of making changes to a property to appease an applicant.  However, I will improve a property if it improves value to the home and helps secures a good tenant from moving.