If you ask most landlords, they will tell you a good or bad experience that they’ve had with allowing pets in their rental properties.
Sadly, this is to be expected because the rental market has lacked standards when it comes to allowing pets.
Thankfully, landlords can remove the mystery of what to look for when allowing their tenants to have pets, especially if they follow these tips.
Ask For Pet references
Your tenant application should have a spot on it about pets so you can make a determination before you get to the table to sign the lease. The lease itself should have a rider (a separate form on its own page) that lists each pet, along with breed and approximate weight, and is signed by all parties. You definitely want everything in writing.
You can consider requiring a “pet reference” from previous landlords or a vet if you want to be a bit more forgiving or get more information about the animals in question.
As for how many pets, there is no perfect answer. But the principle to work with is that pets do damage and can cause issues, so there is such a thing as too many. We accept up to three pets in a house, usually two in a side-by-side duplex, and one cat in apartments.
Know How Much To Charge For Pet deposits and pet rent
Pets do damage to properties. Dogs are wonderful but love to chew up blinds for whatever reason. Thus, it’s important to charge a pet deposit and monthly pet rent.
Most landlords charge a non-refundable $250 pet deposit and $25/month per pet. This is, of course, just our policy. You may choose different numbers, but the key is to charge both a pet deposit and pet rent. Otherwise, you will simply have extra repairs on your hands.
While there’s no way to accurately account for exactly what damages are done by pets, we believe we basically break even on pet rent/deposits. The big advantage is that by allowing pets, we open up our properties to many more prospective tenants. But we don’t want to gain access to a bigger pool of tenants if it just means we’re going to have extra damages we have to pay for out of pocket.
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Our team has decades of combined property management experience and we look forward to the opportunity of serving you!
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