Let the bidding begin

Here's a funny thing we never thought would happen. A whole crap load of people want to rent our house.

It's almost comical. Here we thought we'd have to beg people to take it on, bribing them with stories of cool summer breezes and friendly (HA!) neighbors. Instead there is a crowd coming to us. We haven't even let the word out yet, in fact had only just decided ourselves two weeks ago to even rent the place full time. We originally had it firmly pressed in our head that we could somehow keep the house as a luxury palace to visit any time we liked, but then reality sunk in. We can't pay all the loans and have a good life in Mexico. We need a steady income on the house.

So far four seperate parties are interested in renting our house more or less as is, (meaning that we don't have to fill all the little holes in the walls but that we do have to finish the kitchen and bedrooms). The stories of these folks are all as varied as can be and yet they share a common thread. They all have little resources and most have emotional baggage. Most of them see our house as a simple solution to their problems, four bedrooms on a lake for half the rent that they can afford. Life as they see it could be good. Life could change for the better.

Candidate(s) one and two are old colleagues of Sebs who keep getting word of mouth updates about us and our Mexico adventures. They have large or soon to be budding families and they'd like to be in more space for a lot less money. One couple has boy/girl twins born the same month as Little S and they also have another child. We can understand this need for space but we aren't too keen on the idea that these people view the house as rundown and something they can "live with." Both couples we know are apartment dwellers and have no experience living in old homes nor do they ever say things like "we love that your house is old, crumbly and lovely!" I think they just want sheer volume at any cost. Conclusion is that their wives will be at the end their ropes after one year and the kids probably won't realize that they mustn't take little, Mattel matchbox cars into the cast iron bathtub because it marks up the enamel (as we quickly discovered with Little S).

Candidate three is a 40 something divorcee who lives up the street. She's got a nice house in the village that's beautifully decorated (she always leaves her door open). I love her taste and I appreciate that she spends a lot of time and money decorating her home. But she has these drunken parties that keep us awake a lot and she does this annoying thing where she sunbathes in a string bikini on the neighbor opposite her's front porch stoop. The poor old couple are in their 80's and she barely knows their names let alone asks them if it's okay as she lies there chatting on her cell phone. She also presumably has financial dire straits as she keeps stalling in telling us how much she thinks the house is worth because she needs to see how much she'll "be getting" once her affairs are in order.

Finally there is our contractor who has pretty much become part of the family because he's been here so long working on our house. We realized why he'd been so down lately when we chatted with him over lunch this weekend. His wife of 30 years has left him. He asked us if we'd rent the house to him for the three years we'd be gone. He said that he thought he could be happy here, he'd continue doing projects for us and he also mentioned that he loves the house, something we already know. I guess that makes him our top candidate so far.

Who knew we'd have all these kooky choices though.