YOUR LIABILITY MAY SKYROCKET IF YOU ALLOW PETS IN YOUR RENTAL PROPERTY SHARON VORNHOLT
here is always a lot of discussion about whether or not you should allow pets in your rental property. At
my local REIA, this is also a topic that comes up pretty frequently.
A lot of folks feel very strongly (like I once did) that pets always end up damaging the property, so they just don’t
allow them. There are other landlords welcome pets and feel they get better, long term tenants. In my business,
what I found was that if you told the tenant you didn’t allow pets and they already had one, they just “sneaked”
them in anyway. When that happened, you missed the opportunity to collect pet deposits up front and additional
monthly fees for the dog or cat. While these amounts of money rarely took care of all of the damage especially
for a short term tenants, they often encouraged good tenants to stay longer if they could bring their pet.