Home hunting is cut throat...even when renting

In my last entry I mentioned we were down to two choices of town homes.  Well that choice is now down to one because our number 1 choice was put into a rental bidding war.  The owner was willing to take us because we are better candidates than the other applicant, BUT he wanted us to live there for 18 months.  For us that just can't happen.  In the next 9 months we want to buy so renting for a short period of time is very important.  The other town home we likes was HUGE and totally beautiful we just made it option two because it cost a little more per month.  But one good option is that the owner agreed to a 9 month contract with month to month after.  Now we just need to get the papers into the agent and cross our fingers that everything works.  If this place doesn't work out then we'll be going out to search for more rentals because everything else we saw was just really crummy.