1. A brand new appliance makes the home attractive to prospects. It is better to buy a new one than spend a ton of time cleaning and fixing it. The first few prospects commented about the stovetop. Since it came from more than one person, I wanted to address it and spent 2 weeks cleaning it - disassembling the front door of the oven, cleaning the glass surface and putting it back, cleaning the oven rack, cleaning the stovetop with bleaching powder, soap, blade. In the end, I bought a new stove.

2. I still have not figured out an easy application process. Mine was hard. I knew it. I am sure I lost a few prospects because they could not figure out how to submit applications. I did not use the Zillow application because I wanted to get the applicant's SSN and Driver's License # and Zillow's application does not give those to the landlord.

3. I said no to pets initially and later allowed small pets. Many qualified renters have pets and my neighborhood is pet friendly. The kind of people who want to rent there have pets.

4. Those who are interested will move very fast with the application. Two of them showed a lot of urgency. I did not respond immediately or I wondered why they are moving so fast. By the time I got back to them, they already signed somewhere else.

5. There are many entitled applicants. They started giving orders - can we ask the color of paint to be white if you are going to paint and even asked me to include it in the contract. First, I never said I will paint. Second, it is not your choice. They made many such demands. I wonder whether they will ask their 100+apartment managers the same. Probably not.

6. Dont mention any good changes(enhancements) you may want to make. In the beginning, I mentioned a few and then they did not leave those during the process and took control of the conversation. It did not look like a healthy start for a partnership. I stopped telling except that I will get the house cleaned before move-in.

7. I did not have the lease agreement ready when I started showing the home. It took me a long time to get it ready and revise. I should have different versions of the lease - pets, no pets, early termination clause, month to month are all variations.

8. I heard expat tenants are great. Both on this forum and in real life, people gave awesome reviews about them. I had a few inline and I waited as long as I could to go with them. It did not work out but I will still consider them next time.

9. Rent payments - It took a long time to learn about different options. I am going with what works for tenants - Zelle, checks, and wire transfer. What works for one applicant may not work for the other and may not work for the landlord. I might need to use a mix of payment options even for one tenant.

10. It is a huge learning curve the first time. A friend said it is so easy to rent in this area and houses go for rent like hotcakes. It was not the case for me. I had to put in a lot of effort and time. During the time I was waiting, some homes were getting listed and delisted in a week. It was very sad and frustrating for me.

11. I showed it to way more people than I should. I wish I have a way to figure out who the really interested ones are and showed it only to those.

I will add more to this thread as I remember. Please correct me if I got any wrong. This forum has helped me a lot.

San Francisco, California

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