Looking for a tenant during a pandemic

[Darwin D Wu]

Hello,

First time landlord here. I recently bought a house at the Excelsior area for house hacking and was able to get a pretty good deal for the property itself.
The initial plan was to share the place with a few friends but 1 of them changed their mind and decided not to proceed at the last minute.

While there's still roughly a month or so before the property is ready for move in (the house is currently going through work for updates),
I'm wondering if I should be worried and hurry to find tenants due to the current state of the world and a bunch of bargain sells for rentals on the market in San Francisco.
The pricing I'm thinking of is $2300 ~ $2500 for a 2b/1b in a 5b/3.5b house.

My gut instinct is telling me to not make a hasty move since taking in the wrong people could be disastrous in the long term.
At the same time, not having the rental income to cover costs is also painful.

I've also observed that people inquiring tends to want to move in as soon as possible, hence the current state of the house is definitely not ideal when a potential tenant comes to see the rooms.
So should I wait till the house is clean and ready before start advertising again?

I'm curious what your thought process would be if you were in my situation?

Thanks

[Johnson H.]

You definitely want to choose the right tenant for your in law, especially since it will fall under rent control. I would include in your ad the future move in date to screen applicants. People are still moving around and renting units in SF so don’t worry about that but it is taking a bit longer to rent units out so posting ads on CL and Zillow early on is what I would do.