My husband and I closed on our first SFH in a B+ neighborhood at the end of June. After a couple of weekends of hard work to get it where we wanted, we listed the property on Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Craigslist, Apartments.com, realtor.com and a few others. It's in great shape with hardwood floors and a nice layout. We have gotten probably a dozen or so requests to tour the property -- several showed up, others never did. Our home has been listed for a month now and I'm getting a little worried. We can afford to eat the mortgage payment, but would rather not of course considering we started down the REI path to build wealth and increase cash flow, not dent our wallets. The monthly rent is comparable to other similar homes in the area. We have stood by the principles Brandon discusses in his book requiring applicants to have credit scores 600+ and gross monthly (or combined monthly) income of roughly three times the rent. We don't want to waste our time on showings to applicants who won't qualify so when they reach out to us via Zillow, Trulia, etc we follow up with an email telling them we are happy to give them a tour of the home, but also tell them to be aware of our requirements. Does anyone have any advice on this? Is this too harsh? Should we be more lenient or stand our ground? Am I freaking out prematurely considering we've only been trying to rent it for a month or should I be worried? Also, does anyone suggest listing our property in different ways -- i.e. leasing agency, old fashion bulletin boards, etc?

THANK YOU so much in advance for your time to answer my questions. We are just starting out and very excited about our first purchase. Now, we just want it rented to great tenants!!

-Stephanie

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Struggling to rent first SFH

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