My wife and I just had our 3rd child in December and we decide we should probably upgrade to a house that has more bedrooms. So we looked at some houses over the past few months and found one that we liked. I then created some flyers and a website to advertise my house for rent. I did get a man that was interested in renting my house and he signed a rental agreement and gave me $1,000 cash to hold the house for him. He said he would be back in two weeks, he had to travel for his job. It's been about 3 weeks and I haven't heard from him. I have no way to reach him, I'm stressing a bit, because I'm supposed to close on my other house in about 7-10 days. This would leave me with two properties to pay mortgages on. If he flakes on me, I have his $1,000 and that's it. I can probably handle this for 2 months and possible 3 months. After that I would be in a situation where I can not afford it anymore. That scares me a bit! If that were to happen to me, would I have to foreclose on my house? Property values are declining like crazy these days! If I ever had to be in this situation, could the house I plan on buying be taken away from me in some kind of foreclosure\bankruptcy thing or would that only affect the property in trouble?
Just looking for legal advice on this worst case scenario, during this time of not knowing if this renter is going to pull through or not!
Any advice you could provide me would be deeply appreciated.

