Renting to pet owners can be a difficult decision for a landlord to make. There are certainly pros and cons to both sides of it, but it can affect a large number of people.
About 90 million American families own a pet.
With such a large percentage of Americans owning pets, do you allow pets in a rental property? Here are the pros and cons of renters with pets.
Pros
One of the biggest reasons that you should allow pet owners in your apartment building is because of the sheer number of people that own pets. With 90 million American families owning pets, you are opening up your building to a large new audience.
Other apartment buildings may not allow pets in their building, so you can instantly create more demand for your building by allowing people to bring their pets to live with them.
Another big thing that you can do as a landlord is charge pet owners a pet fee. This is a standard charge among landlords, with pet owners paying a small percentage of their rent for their pets.
That instantly creates another revenue stream for you and it can make your apartment building even more profitable.
So, for example, say you have 20 pets that are living in your apartment building. If you charged $60 a month for every pet that is living in the building, you would have an extra $14,400 in income every year.
Combined with having that extra revenue, you can charge higher rent for your apartments because you are creating demand among pet owners. So, the financial incentive is definitely there to allow pets in your building.
Cons
Despite the financial incentives above, there are still cons to having pets in your building.
The first is that it can potentially draw other people away from your apartment. This is because up to 30% of Americans are affected by pet allergies. So, you could risk having other renters being unable to live around certain animals.
Some people also just do not like pets or are scared of them. If someone brings a big enough dog, other renters could develop a fear of it attacking them.
You also have to consider the behavior of certain pets. Are cats and dogs going to cause property damage with their claws? Will a dog attack another renter or pet if it is not well-trained?
These are factors that you need to consider because you could end up having extra maintenance bills to fix the damage that was caused by pets. You could also be potentially held liable for the behavior of pets in your apartment building.
Should You Allow Pets in a Rental Property?
Should you allow pets in a rental property? The answer is it depends on what you see as a bigger benefit.
You could make tweaks to the above to try to get the best of both worlds. Or, if your building is big enough, the financial gain may be worth it.
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