What Have I Got Myself Into?

Ok, last summer, the Army sent me and hubby (and our combined six kids) to upstate NY. FAR upstate NY, almost in Canada. The area has lots of rentals for 2-3 bedroom houses. The Army post has plenty of housing of the same. However, with our large family, we required a 4+ bedroom house. We weren't quite ready to purchase, so we did some searching. We found an awesome house, about 16 miles away from the post, in a quaint little New England village. It was 5 bedrooms, 1.5 baths and massively large, around 3000 finished sq feet. The large, high ceiling attic could easily be finished, adding another 1500 sq feet.

The problem, the house was for sale by owner. I contacted the owner and asked if he'd considered renting the house. Well, they had been renting it...with really horrible results. The prior tenants were not nice to the house. Some of the stuff they did was mind-boggling. We talked back and forth some and with assurance from us that we were much better tenants, they agreed to rent it to us. We also told them that we would do some improvements, with their approval to make the house better. We would pay for some of them out of pocket and other ones, we'd split costs or take a break in rent to compensate. We may also look at purchasing the house in the future, but we have to look at how financially feasible it would be since we aren't expected to be here more than 5 years.

So.....the adventure begins!

The house prior to the previous tenants.