It's hard to say if you should leave it vacant or not. I know we didn't even have the choices you do when we fell into the landlord game (it's nice to have options).
We became accidental landlords when we had a 4/3 built in Central Florida on a nice corner lot for $170,000 in 2005. We had that same house appraise for $262,000 about a year later, but when it was time to sell in 2011 a realtor guaranteed they could get us close to $110,000 for it. We became Landlords and fell in love with the investing side of it. We were fortunate enough to get some good renters in there and they have actually remained there for the last 6 years.
If you can find good tenants it could be well worth renting out until the market changes. By the time our tenants next lease is up our house should go on the market for about $195,000. We haven't raised their rent once since they moved in because the market keeps going up about 8% a year. They are still paying the mortgage and we aren't loosing money. The principal balance is going down and the property is appreciating back to where it should be. Now if we had put horrible renters in there we might have not been so lucky. Hope this helps.....but you are the one that has to roll the dice.
