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Paying extra when renting with pets?
Has anyone done that before?
I listed our new rental as "no pets" and our top applicant emailed me before she came over last night and asked if she could pay a higher deposit or more per month since she has a small, house trained dog. I told her we would consider it.
I talked to H about it last night, and he doesn't want to charge her extra. He said he doesn't want to make her mad and doesn't think it's nessecary.
My thought is that it's what 95% of other landlords do and she offered so I don't see how that would make her mad.
I was thinking of adding on $20/month or charging her a one time, non-refundable pet deposit of $200.
Is that reasonable, or should we just not charge her anything?
And yes, I realize we are talking about a very small amount of money in the grand scheme of things.
And FWIW, H thought I was asking too much when I listed the house, but told me he thought it would be awesome if I could pull it off. Based on the response and the number of applicants we got, I'm wondering if we didn't ask enough.
Re: Paying extra when renting with pets?
I think it is reasonable to charge extra. Not familiar with landlord/rental laws in MI, but i would think that higher rent would be the way to go. That way there would be no issues with deposit refunds at the end.
Good luck.
When I was a renter, I expected to pay more for a pet.
I would charge her a flat fee for pet cleanup. I would also add some language in the rental agreement about the renter being responsible for any damages caused by the pet. (Ex, our precious dog Greta - as a puppy - chewed up some of the kitchen molding.)
Yay that this is moving fast for you guys.
I know it's common and I think it's reasonable.
That said, when I was looking for an apartment, I had narrowed it down to two and we were torn between which one to choose. The fact that one of them didn't charge extra for cats helped sway our decision to select that one.
I think that is a very good point. We did hear from 2 different applicants that finding a 3 bedroom rental in our area was very hard to find. One couple has been looking for months. I feel bad because they really want to get out of the city they live in, but I don't think we're going with them.
This is us, too. Granted, we've rented the same place for eight years now, so I haven't checked policies recently, but our top priority in an apartment when we were searching was that it was cat-friendly. We did not pay extra in our initial deposit and we do not pay any extra per month because we have two cats. And that was how I wanted it.
The apartments we live in now allow cats but not dogs. I believe they charge an extra $10/month if you have a cat. Not positive since we don't have pets. I wouldn't have minded the extra charge.
At our last apartment our previous cat tore up the carpeting at the door, and I completely expected money to be taken out of our security deposit for the damage. Amazingly it wasn't.
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If you don't charge a monthly fee or extra deposit, I'd definitely write in that they are responsible for damages. And maybe a cleaning fee at the end, especially if there is carpeting.
We've always paid more for our pets in the past. It would have been nice not to, but I expected it.