Contractor Scheduling - Wait to renovate?

[Aubrey Prado]

I recently purchased a 3/1 in our town that I plan on doing primarily cosmetic rehab + replacing all of the plumbing. It is very dated and generally looks run down and dirty. There is drywall damage everywhere and the carpets are probably 30 years old. I live in a town with a population of only 30K, so there are only maybe a dozen good GC's that can do the work for us. After getting ghosted by the contractor that we had lined up before closing and having items stolen from the property by the backup GC, I have called every other GC in town to get a price/time estimate and none of them would be able to start work on my project for at least 3 months because demand for their work is so high. So the question is - what do I do? Wait to renovate before placing a tenant but have the house just be a black hole for my money for the next few months? Or place a short-term tenant in a sub-par home and risk the issues that can come with that? My husband and I both work full time so functioning as our own GC and finding all of the subs that we would need is not possible because we don't get home from work until at least 5 every evening.