Progressive Property Management - Tuesday, June 30, 2015
A lot of tenants applying for your rental property have pets. So today we’re talking about how to foolproof your pet policy for your property. You basically have three options for addressing pets when you’re marketing your rental home.
Pets Allowed
You can say pets are allowed. That tells potential tenants that you don’t care if they have pets and that you’re open to any type of pet as long as an additional deposit is paid for the privilege of bringing animals into your property.
Pets Not Allowed
A second option is to say that no pets are allowed. One thing you have to understand if you’re going to do this is that 70 percent of households have pets. So if your marketing says you don’t allow pets, tenants will do one of two things. Either they are going to avoid your listing and not bother seeing the property, or they’re going to lie to you. No one is going to abandon or put down their dog just because you don’t want pets. Instead, they’ll move in and say they don’t have pets, and then they will breach the contract by bringing in their pet.
Submit Pets for Approval
At Progressive Property Management, we recommend a third option. That is, we ask potential tenants to submit their pets for approval. This gives them the opportunity to tell us how many pets they have, what type of pets they have as well as details such as how old the animal is and what it weighs. Then, you can decide whether or not to let that tenant move in with the pet. You can also determine how much of an extra deposit you will require in order to protect your property from damage.
If you have any questions about allowing pets in your property or what you can do to minimize the potential for damage and liability, please contact us at Progressive Property Management.
