Newbie from Canby, Oregon

[Amanda H.]

Hello,

My name is Amanda. My husband and I are going to be moving soon and will be renting our townhome in Oregon. We are the first owners (and it was our first home), have lived in it for 5 years. We have never been landlords before. I have done a ton of research and we are very by the book people. We have not yet advertised the property, but I did respond to someone looking for a place in a Facebook group I'm in. They are coming to see the property this weekend. Since we agreed to the meeting, the woman has been kind of hounding me with questions via Facebook. I can tell she's extremely eager, but it's getting annoying. She also mentioned a couple things that were a red flag when we spoke. For example, her primary reason for wanting to move at this time (in addition to needing more room) is a tense situation with her downstairs neighbor over noise (my prospective tenant being the accused noise-maker). She also intends to babysit out of the home (I'm not sure if she's a licensed provider or not). She already has 4 kids of her own, additional kids means even more wear and tear on our home. I mentioned I was not comfortable with the liability situation that puts us in as well as the CC&R's for our development that prohibit property owners from having businesses where people would be coming and going regularly. And they need the place very soon, two weeks from now. I feel like this is a failure of good planning on their part.

My question is this...a realtor friend told me I could not accept an application knowing they don't qualify...or something along those lines. If they meet minimum qualifications, though, don't we have to accept the application? Even if we're feeling like we probably don't want to rent to them? They seem kind of like drama.