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Originally Posted by boopster  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. |
I could NEVER be a landlord because I know all they go through! My grandma has a basement suite and has always rented it out. One guy had lived there maybe 6 months, and he moved out without telling her, after not paying rent for a couple of months. He had beer bottles lining the walls around the whole place (on the ledge of the foundation) which my grandma had asked him to remove many times before because you could see them right in front of the windows from the street.. He had punched holes through the drywall and even through a door. She had to replace almost everything. She hadn't charged much for a damage deposit and he hadn't even been paying rent so it was all out of her pocket. She did send a letter to him and his parents, and they stuck up for him saying he would never do something like that.
After that, her sister and brother-in-law moved in for a year until they retired, because their house sold much sooner than they had expected! And when they moved out, her half-brother moved in and he will be staying there for good. So many tenants take advantage of good landlords. I could never do it!