Should I Allow Pets in My Rental Home?

Today what we are going to talk about is whether or not you should or should not allow pets in your rental home. We have a lot of owners that will come to us and say that, for whatever reason, they do not want a pet inside their property. Which we understand and it is your right as an owner to disallow a pet, as long as it is not a service animal.

One thing I will say though, regarding pets, is that I think owners need to realize is that 80% of all prospective tenants statistically have a pet. Now you have to understand, a pet can be a goldfish, a hamster, it could be basically anything that was in a cage or has four legs. And, people most of the time, when they think of a pet, they think of these large home destroying animals like a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull, which obviously, if you do allow pets you must make sure that it is not on the Dangerous Breeds list. Animals that will cause your insurance to cancel you if the tenant does have something that is on that dangerous breed list.

But, my suggestion if you have some reservations about allowing somebody with a pet in your property, and you want to be selective just put in the listing that pets are on a case by case basis. That way you are not disallowing anybody with something like a goldfish or a hamster or something real small. Because when you say no pets, legally these people cannot even apply for the property. So, you could be missing out on a lot of potential people because your perception of a pet is a big animal and their perception of a pet is something real small. So, again I would say case by case basis and then you could make a decision when they bring the animal, you can take a look at it. I recommend you have them take a picture of it and send it to you so you can verify that is the animal so that if you do go to the property, you can verify that is the animal they took a picture of and everybody is on the same page with no misunderstandings