Having been a landlord years ago, I have to say that I never allowed pets in my rentals. This doesn't apply to anyone here, but most of the people we rented to had no respect for the property -- every time we had a tenant move out, we had to completely re-do the entire place - trash removal, cleaning, new paint, draperies, carpets, and vinyl flooring. A couple of tenants even took all of the light fixtures and everything else they could remove, and one took a sledge hammer to everything he couldn't remove. The last one was because we evicted him after he failed to pay his rent for six (!) months. The no-pets rule was more about liability than about damage since we pretty much knew we were going to have to redo each place. Perhaps the monthly pet rental addition is for liability insurance?
We reached the point where it was costing us far more to own the rentals than we were making on them so we sold everything. And I can tell you some horror stories about tenants. Landlords get a bad rap. There are some really bad ones, but most are regular people trying to make a living. They do have lots of costs that have to be paid every month whether or not the tenants pay their rent. |