To think that people with pets get a raw deal in the lettings market?

[Vallhala]

I live in a privately rented house and as a dog and cat owner as well as a mum am lucky enough to have a fantastic landlord who is happy to let his lovely house to someone with both pets and children. However, finding a suitable home was a nightmare. So many landlords I approached just wouldn't entertain the idea of letting to people with pets. Agencies were even worse, to the point of rudeness.

Today I have learned of a man who owns a well behaved dog. He have been consistantly rejected by private landlords and/or their agents because of his dog and has had to take his best pal to rescue as a result.

This may not seem relevent to MN because this seperated gentleman's DC will remain in the family home with Mum but there are plenty of families who experience the same problem. But what IS the problem?

I have in the past(and have advised others) to offer an increased deposit, extra rent, written assurance of carpet cleaning, rented home insurance especially tailored for pet owners and personal references from professionals related to the species who know the family and their pet/s and yet still we have faced knockback after knockback from landlords.

Isn't it time that landlords started to look at these offers seriously and consider them on a case by case basis instead of rejecting the proposal of pets in their houses out of hand? Heaven knows, when a family is moving, especially as a result of marital breakdown, children need all the comfort and continuity they can get and the loss of a much-loved pet on top of their already upset lives can be heartbreaking.

Landladies (and landlords), please take time to consider prospective pet owning tenants as individual cases.

Katisha, no it won't.

This is the 5th house where I've lied about the cat's presence. Never been refused any part of a deposit yet, because the place is utterly immaculate when I leave.

All I do is get the carpets cleaned professionally and BYU (Bob's your uncle).

She's too old to climb up curtains, and I use my own sofas.

YABU - I would never let my flat out to someone who wanted to keep a dog in there.

The previous owners of my house had a dog and it's taken me months to get rid of the dog smell (yuk!) That includes call carpets being ripped up, everywhere scrubbed over and over and all walls and paintwork re painted. If it had been a rental rpoperty I bet all the soft furnishings would have been stinking too!! I appreciate some dogs don't smell, some owners keep their dogs ina way where you'd never notice they'd ever been there - but some don't! Some dogs stink and some make properties stink!

For those of you who have lied to your landlords, how bloody disgusting. Your landlords may want to live in that house again one day and they/their kids may have allergies (therefore a perfectly valid reason for not wanting pets in their propery!). Why would you do that with someones home?

It gets in the underlay Mad. Sorry to sound obsessive, but you should see the effect on DH.

The thing is Mad, I am sure the flat looks immaculate when you leave it, but you are no longer around to see the effects your cat has on somebody else.

My sister has a cat. She has ceramic floor tiles in her entire flat. No matter how much she cleans before I visit, I still need to take allergy tablets for the entire duration of my stay. Her cat is only ever allowed in the living room. It is not allowed on the sofa, just the floor. As they live in Spain, the cat mostly lives outdoors, on the terrace. Yet I still have problems.

I would not want to rent my flat out to dog owners. I don't think it is practical - the place s full of cream carpets, and to be honest I don't like the smell of dog.

I don't go through an agent - do it directly - and I am not an obsessive landlord, but I would be very annoyed if my tenant got a dog without permission.

yes, it's their home but it's MY house (and yes, bought as an investment, what's wrong with that when pensions are so damn crap nowadays).

Starbuck999 - it's a hard life. Lots of people lie.

When I am in "someone's home", they usually end up pleasantly surprised, as I always decorate, replace bathroom/kitchen/curtain fittings with much better quality ones and leave them there (I'm a Laura Ashley fanatic), so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Katisha - does sound a bit obsessive, but it also sounds like your DH has a really serious condition, which must be horrible for him.

Well we only rent unfurnished and the dogs are never allowed in carpeted rooms. I appreciate that wha we are doing is wrong but dh and I and our 4 dcs need to live somewhere and we don't have the deposit to buy.

QS - I'm sure you do still have problems with a live cat being in the place. No matter how much you clean, you've still got hair and what-have-you floating around in the air, even if it comes into the house just once a day.

In France it is illegal for a landlord to specify no pets, no children or no smoking. Minimum tenancies are 3 years. The principle being that the property is the home of the tenant and it is not acceptable for a landlord to impose lifestyle choices on their tenants. But in France they don't tend to have so many accidental landlords, and property prices are a little more reasonable whether renting or buying.
Obviously that info is irrelevant to the UK market, but just maybe interesting to see the cultural differences.

I think people full stop get a raw deal in the UK lettings market to be honest!

Housing policy in this country is a mess.

And so it should be here Oenopod. :)

In fairness can see the argument against pet owning in rented property for specific reasons, such as the LL or family have pet fur allergies, but to reject out of hand an approach with all the things offered in my OP makes life damn difficult and is unreasonable. I'm a rescuer so have excellent references from many professionals who have met my dogs and have been known to offer a significant percentage of the rent on top of the advertised amount yet still have been treated by agents as if I was asking if I could keep a herd of rabid wildebeast armed with AK47s in the sitting room of their LLs property.

I used to run an inventory business for rented domestic properties and I have seen the following:

A wooden garage door eaten through (about 3ft by 2ft) as the dog food was in the garage and the tenant did not feed the dog regularly.
An outside door eaten through and most of the UPVC in a conservatory chewed and ruined as dog was left alone too long
Floorboards, skirting board and plasterboard wall and carpets having to be replaced as dogs constantly p**d up wall and it soaked through eveything
A set of curtains eaten through as tenants kept rats in a cage and allowed the curtains to rest on the top of the cage (a set of full length fully lined curtains as part of a matching set of three pairs)
Parquet flooring through out the ground floor of a house needing to be sanded and restained as cat had used it as a scratching floor.

These repairs ran to quite a few thousand in some cases and only serve to highlight the worst case. The deposit no way covered the damage. Very often carpets are pulled and 'fluffed' by claws etc or doors scratched.

So I can fully understand why some landlords think it is not worth the bother and would rather wait for someone without animals.

However, I have both a dog and a cat, am a tenant and landlord in the UK and a landlord in the USA. We said we would accept a dog or cat in out house here, and would consider a dog in the USA. We did actually turn one couple down in the USA though as they were starting a restaurant business in a town 30 mins drive away and would have been leaving the dog on its own for long periods of time.

We told agents here we had a dog and cat and just did not look at the houses where they would not be accepted.

It is (as usual in life) all about balance. However, I would give a heads up to those tenants who have been keeping animals in a property without permission - you could be given immediate notice and be charged high amounts for fumigation.

Alibaba! I could understand if it was a family home that the ll intended to live in but it was a damp unfurnished 1 bed flat with a catflap installed! As for the terms of contract they left us with no heating or hot water for 5 weeks in the middle of winter so I think the disrespect was mutual there

I cannot believe how selfish some people are about this. If you are renting a house it is not a permanent arrangement and someone will have to live there after you. If I moved into a house that had had a cat or dog or even guinea pig live in it I would notice. I am allergic to all of these (and various other things). Whether you clean the carpet or not I would be affected by it.

I have therefore always asked my landlords to confirm that there have been no pets living in the house. If there had been pets without the landlord's knowledge and I took the tenancy I'd be stuck in a pretty miserable situation for however many months.

I'm pretty stunned by this behaviour.

SaorAlba, I agree that people shouldn't keep pets in breach of their contract, but Valhalla is right - people with pets are horribly discriminated again in the rental market.

I'm a bit confused (and saddened) by this statement:
" If you are renting a house it is not a permanent arrangement"
It doesn't matter whether it is permanent or not, a house y you rent is your home just as much as one you buy and you should be able to enjoy your 'normal' life while living in it. Buying is not permanent either, after all - people do move house. Would you be quizzing owners about pets if you were buying?

SaorAlba I really do sympathise but I'm 100% certain that whoever lived in the flat before me had a cat as there was a catflap with muddy pawprints around it when we moved in! What would happen if someone had a friend who regularly visited with a dog? I think it would be unreasonable for a ll to specify who was and wasn't allowed to visit but if you're that allergic I'm assuming you'd suffer as a result. I'm not sure where you'd expect a ll to draw the line

Would you be quizzing owners about pets if you were buying?

Yes, and planning on getting the carpets and underlay changed asap. WHich we have done.

Katisha / SaorAlba, unless your allergy is life-threatening it sounds a little OTT to me to quiz house vendors about pets. Then again, I don't suffer from allergies, so what do I know? As has been said, where do you draw the line? Do you ask if the vendors have friends or family who visit with their pets?

WkdSM, I understand your point but surely the examples you gave are a very small percentage of your total customers and a similar number of non-pet owners caused significant damage?

Many of the examples, if not all, would be covered under specific insurance. Why wouldn't that suffice?

I allow cats in the house I let, and have just had anew back door made with cat flap (I intend to have cats when I reoccupy my home), but I don't allow dogs. There is no garden, just patios, and the neighbours get disturbed if a dog is left and barks all day.

I would be asking my letting agent serious questions if a tenant was found to have a dog after they'd moved in.

our ex neighbour moved in with partner so now rents out his house

he had a dog - never any problems with it

first tenants had a dog and various other indoor pets in cages - and had to be made to come back and redecorate where necessary cos of scratching etc (I assume they did this to avoid losing their deposit)

next tenants have 3 dogs which ahve wrecked the garden, regularly get out, and when locked in all day howl the place down.

the bottom line is this - you cannot tell whether a dog owner is a good one or not. and if I was a LL i would NOT have pets in the house - my choice

anyone who breaks their contract and is found out and given notice to leave deserves it

the problem is NOT LLs, it is the fault of the irresponsible pet owners and bad tenants who have made them wary - and unfortunately they cannot tell you from Adam

Wlel it's not "quizzing" them really. You just say, and do you have ad og or a cat? Then if they do you make mental note to sort out carpets asap. Don't see how that is being OTT.

And whenever we are invited out, DH wants to know if hosts have an animal, and if so he doses up on antihistamine and takes his ventolin with him . Not of course it's not "life-threatening" but it's bloody miserable being short of breath with itchy eyes and streaming nose.

I rented out my house when I lived abroad for a while. It was furnished and no way would I have wanted animals on my furniture.
OK if unfurnished and not recently decorated I suppose. I would have OK'd fish, but that's all. Similarly I didn't want smokers.

My house, my choice.

"Would you be quizzing owners about pets if you were buying?"

When we were looking to buy our current house, there were two very similar for sale on the same street.

The fact that one had a resident cat meant we bought the other one - we would have had to have removed all soft furnishings before moving in, as I am allergic. Like QS, I can spend an hour or two in a recently cleaned cat place with hard floors before I start wheezing, but overnight is just horrible. Somewhere I had to live for an extended period? No way....

Call me mad, but I'd have thought it would be standard practice to redecorate between tenants anyway?

If you're a decent landlord this shouldn't happen very often - unless you're letting to students when you should expect a bit of chaos lol.

Marjee it's all very well being outraged, but I am astounded at the attitude of many people on this thread who think it's ok to break the terms of their contract.

We also ask about pet ownership before buying a house. I wouldn't buy somewhere that had had dogs or cats in it if I could help it, because we would have to immediately replace all the carpets and underlay due to my allergies.