Should You Allow Pets In Your Rental Property?

Making an investment in real estate property has been a rising pattern amongst informed investors for a long time. Despite the current slowdown in the marketplace, a lot of folks continue to make investments in property. The dream of having many properties, renting them out, and allowing tenants cover the accumulated equity is a particularly ambitious plan.

If you can do this appropriately, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor when conducting this type of investing activity. However, investing in rental properties requires you to become a landlord. This means that you will need to actively seek out and screen tenants, and then continually follow up with them regarding their monthly rent payments and any damages done to the property. Traditionally, one of the most difficult questions that any landlord must deal with is whether or not to allow their tenants to have pets in the property.

Allowing pets has many pros and cons. The biggest downside is probably the risk that a pet will do significant damage to the rental property. This is disconcerting as some pet owners simply don't understand how to adequately care for their pet, and waste stains can literally ruin the carpet. Additionally, many pets put off an odor from their bodies, and virtually all of them will scratch and chew on a variety of household items.

An additional downside to welcoming pets is that they might disturb the neighboring residents (especially dogs). This is not a chief concern on a daily basis because the landlord obviously does not live in the home; But the quality of your renters, especially the degree to which they have pets, might affect the valuation of the house when you are ready to sell. If the behavior of the surrounding residents goes down hill because the good ones move elsewhere due to the presence of an unruly pet, your property's valuation will certainly take a hit.

Finally, another negative effect of allowing people to own pets within a rental property is the fact that they will be more likely to let other areas of the house decline. For example, if a pet owner spends all of his time focusing on taking care of the pet, then he might not notice that a drain has clogged. This could cause the landlord to be stuck with significant costs in terms of repairing the property.

With all that being said, there are indeed a few pros to welcoming pet owners into your rental units, not the least of which is that the apartment will be coveted by a larger pool of people. The reason is that many landlords do not allow pets, and thus allowing this would give you an advantage which in turn would help the house rent faster.

Another positive is that you can charge more in rent if you allow pets. Many landlords will require an initial deposit for a pet, and then also charge a higher monthly fee. Finally, many pet owners who are also financially responsible will take very good care of their pets and will tend to stay longer. A pet owner who is happy in their surroundings will not want to leave, which may result in your property having a much lower turnover compared to a property that does not allow pets.