Out of state, sight unseen, wants to pay a years worth of rent in advance...

[Kimberly H.]

Just listed my house for rent Saturday.  Got a 3rd call today from an out of state tenant who now says she wants to rent my house, sight unseen, and offered to pay a years worth of rent upfront with a $100/mo (6%) discount, plus security deposit and pet deposit.  She says she and her husband are retired, he is here staying with family in the neighborhood but is afraid if he waits until Wednesday to see the house when our next rental open house is, it will be gone. She said they keep running into that problem, which isn't hard to believe, our rental market is hot. She says they are moving back here because there is family in the area to help her 93 yr old mother, who she says she will put into assisted living soon.

When I was going through the normal spiel about credit checks and sales contract and current mortgage payment info, she was like, well, I don't understand why you need that, we would be paying rent in advance...I don't like tenants arguing with me off the bat, I don't want a problem PITA tenant.

I don't like out of state people, harder for me to look them up on county crime websites since I don't know the counties out there or if they have data online like we do here.

From those of you with tons of rental experience, your thoughts?

[Kimberly H.]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, well, except for one person who felt the need to insult me just because I wanted to reach out to this community and ask for feedback from those with more experience than I. I told her since her husband is in town he can make the rental open house tomorrow like everyone else because we will not rent to someone who hasn't seen the place that we haven't met, and we will only offer a 1.5% discount for prepaid rent. I have a lot of interested people who plan to attend already and I will just pick someone else who is not a PITA. I am willing to bet they will not fill in an application for their 93 yr old mother living with them and it will go to the bottom of the pile until they do and by then I will have rented to someone else. Not making someone else's sense of urgency my own.