Choosing between tenants

[Andrew M.]

Hello all,

I'm brand new here and as a landlord so I'm posting this in hopes I can get some opinions into what I should do.  A few months ago I bought a new house and held onto my old one so I could rent it out. I've got it all fixed up and went through the whole process to get it ready etc. I'm now at the point where I have two applicants that can move in for July and I'm having a tough time choosing between two of them.

Application 1 (3 related + 1 friend) - application was submitted first

Pros
Plenty of income to pay - 5x+
2 with great credit (>700)
work with a friend who gave a good reference
1 attended the same religious institution i did so I'm less inclined to think they would mess up the unit which could be naive
1 year of rental history with no issues paying a fairly higher rent
high job security (family business)

Cons
higher chance of short term rental - I'm basing this on their young age and the fact they could easily decide to move out on their own
2 with bad credit (<600)
Young - early twenties
basement will need to be used as an additional bedroom
potential parking issues (4 cars)
"kiddish" rooms would need to be repainted

Application 2 (1 adult + 4 kids)

Pros
higher chance of long term rental (>3 years) - I say this because the last two locations this person stayed for 3 and 4 years only to leave when the houses were sold
fit to the house - in that the rooms are decorated "kiddish" now and don't need to be modified at all ie. repainted, etc)
paid same rent for over 7 years w/no issues

Cons
43% of income to rent
Bad credit (<600)  - I'm told this is the result of issues with the absentee parent

I should also say i have a relative who is a lawyer involved in real estate so he's prepared my lease and helped me out with what can be done legally etc. as well. The property is a townhouse with 3 beds and 1.5 baths. I've run background checks - this included calls for job and landlord references.

Neither of them expressly meets my original criteria concerning credit scores but all the references check out.

My main concern with applicant 2 would be the low salary compared to rent but they've been paying that for 7 years with no issues so I'm not sure that is a valid concern.

My head is saying financially and numbers wise I should go with applicant 1 with a much higher ability to pay and two individuals with better scores.  Applicant 1 also provided me with full credit reports and I can see the reason two have lower scores is because of school loan payments.  Also, legally my reason for rejecting applicant 2 would be % of salary.  For applicant 1 there are only issues related to the association parking rules that may come into play.

However, I believe emotionally I'm leaning toward applicant 2.  Another factor is that they are trying to stay in the same school district though I know that's not my responsibility, I know it can be hard to find a decent priced place in this area.

I understand that neither of these might be considered a great candidate as I've read a lot about what minimum requirements should be but I believe that both of these would be good after running all the background checks.  I don't want to run into the pitfalls of being too 'nice' of a landlord so I do want to look at this logically.  Any thoughts?

Thanks!