Another who prefers renting condos, houses, etc. rather than a motel. We've had great luck and wonderful owners to rent from. Just this year we rented a cottage that had been in the owner's family for many years. It was FILLED with antiques and lots of family items. Gourmet kitchen with many nice items. That was the one where I LOVED the sheets LOL. I could not imagine having all that stuff out - both expensive and sentimental, but apparently they don't have a problem. We've rented for years in Seabrook Island from a couple who live in NJ. And next month we rented a cottage in the mountains of Alabama which is a stone cottage - again filled with antiques, etc. I know we take care of things - but I'm sure there are people who don't and walk off with things. All the places we have stayed, except one in Cashiers, NC, had cleaning services. The couple in NJ keep in touch with us and I am often their "spy" on the cleaning services at that condo. LOL About bedbugs - you can get them anywhere and everywhere. You can even get them in old pieces of furniture. And the fanciest of hotels. It has nothing to do with cleanliness. If you travel anywhere, you are at risk. Many people bring them home in their luggage. NEVER put your luggage on the floor. tina

Renting out your property certainly can be done. But it is like taking on a part time job, especially depending on the part of town and potential tenants. Some are more work that others. There is a completely different mentality between renters and owners, and you have to have a certain personality to dealing with tenants (e.g. you won't put up with every excuse why the rent is late, again!). It also helps if you or your spouse are handy and can fix minor things that go wrong. As Abraham said, screen your renters extremely thoroughly and don't just accept anyone...find the right tenant not the first one. You don't want to have vacancies very often, so treat the tenants good, but firm. Finally, calculate what you pay for PITI and add a fudge factor (repairs/profit) to figure out the rent rate. Check around to see if houses are renting for that amount. That will really tell you if you should rent it. Check with your lender on the amount of time they require it rented before you can claim the rent as income in your mortgage application. At my credit union, it was 1 year. Good luck.

Anything is possible. But this is a buyer's market, so by putting such a stipulation on the sale of your home, you will end up further limiting an already small number of potential buyers. There are plenty of empty, bank-owned foreclosures out there for investors such as you describe to go out and purchase, so unless there is something extra special about your house, I think the chances of you finding a buyer who would be willing to do this are pretty slim.

So if you sell now with a longer escrow period and then have a 60-90 day rent back perhaps would this put you closer to your estimated move in date? I understand your hesitation - for many reasons we would rather sell our house and move next year instead of this summer, and we still might do that, but we've already bought our out-of-state home. I just don't feel very comfortable waiting a year to sell our home here and risk missing out on the current real estate market. We bought our fixer upper second home in a strong seller's market (and for more money than we planned on spending) so we'll need every bit of equity we can get to put into that home and make it as nice as the one we have now.