Today we signed a two year lease with Jan and Phil. It's pretty amazing how fast everything happened. We posted the ad on a few sites and within six days we had a verbal agreement to sign a lease. We didn't even post a sign outside the house - it was all done via the interwebs.
I started getting emails and calls within an hour of posting the house online. The next day we showed it to three parties. Over the six days we averaged about two a day looking at the house, in addition to fielding probably over 30 phone calls and or emails. The interest was so great that we actually talked about raising the price.
The people that are renting our house actually found it through the classified ads at work. Their daughter works here and sent the link to them. Jan and Phil are about the same age as my Dad, so no kids but also no pets...just the two of them. Jan used to work at Focus for over twenty years. This is exactly the demographic I had envisioned when we started thinking about renting our house. Technically you can't make decisions based on this, but it happens on the down low all the time. In all honesty, they were the only ones that actually completed and turned in an application, so that's reason enough. Jan arrived with her own copy already filled out, complete with social security numbers, copies of driver's licenses, and bank statements. Sold.
We have plenty of time to get the place cleaned up before they move in. No repainting necessary, just cleaning. We'll tackle that later after we've moved everything to the new place. We'll see how this new ventures goes. I hope it's not that difficult, because it allows us to use other people's money to pay for our next place. I can always sell the house later if it doesn't work out, but then I'm using my money. The kids don't care, as long as they get the trampoline they were promised!