New Investor - Should I Hold House for 1st Solid Applicant?

[Greg Sawyer]

Hello All,

First time posting, but I've been reading/listening a lot. Thank you all for all the helpful content. My wife and I bought and fixed up our first property and it has now been listed on Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Realtor, and FB Marketplace for a week now. We have had lots of "inquiries" from Zillow, but none that have followed through with answering questions or truly scheduling a showing or anything like that. After 5-6 days we opened it up to allow pets, knowing that we were squeezing our tenant pull down too small and didn't get any real interest for a couple days after that. We were talking about dropping the rent from $1650 to $1600 to drive some interest knowing that we are approaching holidays and the slower winter season, but we just got our first solid applicant last night (Researched comps showed pricing should be: Zillow $1688, BP $1650, Rentometer $1600, two comps in neighborhood with 1 less bedroom are at $1600 and $1550 but they have been vacant for a while). Only down side to this tenant so far is they want to start their lease in January. I obviously don't want to let it sit vacant in December, but so far this is the only solid and responsive applicant I've had. I am meeting them tonight to show them the place and would like to have some ideas on how to approach this topic with them.
1. What strategies could I use in this scenario to encourage them to sign a lease for December?

2. If they absolutely cant start till January, would you ask them to pay for part of the month to help cover holding costs?

3. Should I just leave it up and see if we get any more interest?

4. Should we drop the price and try to drive more interest? Even though if things go through with this prospective tenant they will be paying $1650 and $20 each per month for two dogs netting $1690 (that's very attractive lol)?

Thank you all for your time and insight!