tenants with two large dogs

[Frank Jiang]

We interviewed this tenant family and like them, but they have two large dogs, I believe they are St. Bernard. I noticed that many landlords do not allow pets. I guess for apartment building, it is a good practice to avoid liability issue. My property is a single family house. I guess the liability is not an issue. But my concern is more of the damage of the property. The floor is all hardwood floor. Do you know if dogs pee inside house? Is it a common practice to add more rent and/or security deposit for dogs?

[Robert Taylor]

First off, I'd check with YOUR insurance co. to see what they say about renting to tenants with dogs. Its been a while since I've had this issue come up for me but last time I checked, my insurance co. wasn't happy at all about tenants with large dogs or it may have been any dog for that matter. I'm sure someone else will chime in who has more recent experience on the insurance angle. Also, just because its a single family house means nothing about avoiding liability, what if one of the dogs gets out of the house and badly bites the neighbor kid? Who are his parents going to sue? Answer-ANYONE THEY CAN!!! (which includes YOU!)

As far as extra security deposit-heck yeah! Dogs (and cats!) can do ALL SORTS of damage to a house, hardwood floors, carpet, woodwork, peeing, scratching, etc, etc. A friend of mine recently had his hardwood floors refinished, partially because of a pet smell. (they had a dog and a cat) One of the animals had been urinating so much in one spot that it had soaked all the way through the hardwood AND the subfloor AND into the joists below the floor! Now, this was at his own house, so its different than a tenant, but it goes to show the damage animals can cause. (and I far as I could ever tell, they seemed like well-behaved animals too!)