How long do you place a property under contract while shopping it to buyers?

The best example I can give is this: If you hire someone to come to your home and wash your car and you allow them to wash their own car while they're there, although they are technically conducting a "business activity," they are NOT ooperating a commercial business on the premises(which is what the law allows you to prohibit).If you hire that car washer to open up shop and use the property as their brick & mortar where other clients bring there cars to be washed, however, now you're entering into the commercial use arena. 

It has an olde town feel, with cobblestones and quaint shops.

We were shopping for mortgages thinking if it was for the one purchase, it would only count against us once, but that's apparently only if it's in the same 2 weeks, so each inquiry counted against us, especially as lender said we should keep our pre-approval active so they'd pull another credit check every 3 months or so, and we went almost a year before actually finding a deal worth buying.  

@Nicholas Cornford Why not just shop around lenders now and see if they can use the rental income to help you qualify?  

We followed up with a meeting at a coffee shop.The deal went nowhere, however he did persist and our coffee shop meetings continued.

If you are fix & flipping, they bring you deals that you can partner with them to F&F and they have the contractors, lenders, mentors and project managers that make it a one-stop-shop.  

We shopped a couple of banks (National Penn was/is offering 100% equity on HELOC's) but decided to go with our credit union (PSECU) because they charged zero fees, and paid for the appraisal.

It's a great coffee shop and the head barista is a latte art world champ.

It is a 3 bedrooms 2 bath home and is close to the interstate and shopping.