Dogs and Landlords

[Jesse Brewer]

In the apartment business I often get a lot of people requesting to move into an apartment or house and they want to bring their dog, or in some cases their dogs (as in plural). As a landlord I do not allow dogs in my apartment properties at all, in our single family houses we will allow 1 dog but we do have restrictions. Most landlords (myself included) generally do not like dogs at all; however, as an individual I love dogs, I even have one myself his name is Jack and he is a Great Dane.

The reasons most landlords prefer not to have dogs in their rental units is historically most landlords at one time or another (usually multiple times) have had a bad experience with a tenant and their dog. Most tenants who have dogs (I say most because there are some that do not fall into this category) do not take care of the property as if it were their own and when you add a pet dog (or dogs) in that equation things are dirtier because of the dog feces and urine, the dog tearing things up (scratching doors and walls) and the annoyance of leaving the dog alone and it barking constantly affecting the neighbors (this is more of an issue with apartments not houses). Another major problem I have had personally in the past in apartment communities is the dogs were always taken out in the common areas to relieve themselves and the owners (my renters) would not take the time to clean up after them then the tenants without the dogs would come along and have to deal with dog **** all over the yard and you can imagine that is not pleasant.

Another hot button when it comes to dogs is breed restrictions. Most landlords that allow dogs will have a breed restriction on pitt bulls. This is not something landlords do because they do not like pitt bulls. They do it because the insurance carrier tells them that if there is ever an incident on their property or a pitt bull is found living there during an inspection then their insurance will be canceled. So if you have a pitt bull do not get mad at the landlord that tells you that it’s not allowed, it’s not the landlords fault that the insurance company is restricting the breed. Their only option would be go to a much higher priced carrier, but that would result in you paying a much higher rent and let’s face it, you don’t want that.