We have many pets living in our rental properties!
The 1st step if you are thinking about bringing a pet into your life, and into your rental property, is to contact us with as much detail as possible. At that point we will let you know what is possible with your particular property, in regards to pets.
Some landlord property owners are open to pets, and some are not. Some of our properties allow dogs, but not cats and some allow cats, but not dogs. Some properties have weight or size restrictions and some take it on a pet to pet basis. Most of our properties will restrict the number of pets within the rental.
Each property that we manage can have very different property insurance restrictions, than another property, and this often includes breed restrictions.
And if the rental property is in a condominium, or homeowners association, we are held by those restrictions as well.
Typically, when pets are allowed, it is based upon that particular, individual pet. We will have you submit our document, that identifies your pet by its name, breed, color and other such details.
If you are hoping to move into one of our rental properties, this would happen when you submit an application.
But you can contact us about getting a pet at anytime you are living in one of our rentals. Of course, there are no guarantees; but we can typically give you the parameters of your particular property, fairly quickly.
If Approved:
- You will need to fill out a document regarding your pet.
- We typically charge a non-refundable pet move in administrative fee to offset our costs.
- You will typically need to pay a small monthly pet administration fee. If you have automatic payments setup in your tenant portal, you will need to update the amount, to avoid an accidental late fee.
What is the Non Refundable Pet Administration Fee?
It is a one time fee, charged to you to screen your pet and to process them into our system. This is a brokerage fee and is not being paid as a security deposit.
The monthly pet is set as a small, manageable amount for a tenant to pay; but it helps to offset our costs involved with:
- Pet damage can greatly exceed any security deposit amounts.
- Pet damage can often be hard to define and difficult to assign definitely as a security deposit charge. If there is a hole in a wall, that is easy for us to detail as a charge; but a pet smell, like urine can be difficult and harder to charge appropriately. Pet dander can get into ductwork, under carpet padding and can cause allergies long after the pet has moved out. If these issues need resolution,it is very hard for us to collect against a security deposit for them; even if the expense should be against the pet owner. Again, when we deduct from a security deposit, we need to know we have a clear foundation to do so.
- Pets create increased risk for the property. While your tenant insurance we require you to have should cover this, lawsuits are generally brought against as many parties as possible and we still need to expend considerable action, for things like dog bites.
- Pets are often a drain on our resources as a property management company. It's not uncommon for us to spend considerable amount of time managing barking dog complaints attached to one of our rentals.
Again, we intentionally set our pet fees to be very minimal for the pet owner. This fee helps us to offset some of the costs involved with rental property pets.
