i have two cats and had the damndest time finding an apartment that would accept them, most places charge non-refundable fees they call pet deposits and/or monthly pet rent. we had to pay $600 to have the girls here and half of it is non-refundable.

i wish you luck

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the "no pets" thing is often used as an off-board means of discriminating over who they rent to by small-property landlords.

They can't say "I don't want to rent to that Latino couple because he dresses like a gangster and they have a bull-terrier that they probably use for fighting." (Note that this quote is actually discriminatory and I don't mean to imply it's not.) so you say "Sorry, no pets." The same places tend to attract the mentally-infirm lady with her 40 cats...sorry, no pets. Black family with two small dogs...sorry, no pets. But the upwardly-mobile professional white couple with a German Shepard..."we'll make an exception. I just need a pet deposit of $___."

You might have better luck if you look more rural for rentals. There's almost an expectation that if you live in podunk, you're going to have pets...also landlords care less because house rental typically means a small piece of land and land means the dogs is less likely to be trapped in the confines of the house all the time.

Nothing is worse than for a landlord to be stuck with an apartment that has been totally shredded by an owner irresponsible with their pets. Sure they may have required a security deposit for the pet but if you have a pet that scratches up the carpets, isn't well potty trained and an owner too lazy to bother then it makes it bad for the rest of us pet owners who take good care of our pets. And the security deposit can barely cover replacing carpets and flooring ruined by owners too lazy to take care of their pets.

There are no bad pets, just owners who can't be bothered to take decent care of them.

Yet, there is some idea that if you have pets and don't own the home, your pets are somehow destructive and evil. Weird. From my friends that own property they rent, children make the biggest mess and cause the biggest damage. The stories of destructive pets is sort of an urban legend passed around by landlords. There is a great article from a property management association that pretty much addresses that, and points out how shortsighted people who won't consider pets, are. Frankly, I've seen some rentals with pets, and wonder if the landlords have the inability to make judgements about renters. Pets negotiable, or considered on a case-by-case basis, is the way to go.

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19186150

http://www.petfinder.com/after-pet-adoption/pet-friendly-housing-study.html

Whereas with an apartment someone else owns the home but ultimately the landlord is responsible for fixing it up when someone leaves.

And even with good pet owners there can still be issues. My cats are older and have an issue making the litter box. I find if I leave the doors to the rooms upstairs open they'll just find something they can piss on instead of running downstairs. I also don't really have any decent place to keep a litter box upstairs nor do i want to negotiate the steps with a giant bag of used litter. BTW when I am home do they rarely make mistakes outside of the litter box area.

Solution - I just close all the doors upstairs when I'm not at home. They have plenty of toys, food, water and other goodies downstairs that will keep them busy.

While I always have allowed pets, there were at least 5 renters over the years whose pets did massive damage - way over the compensation from the damage deposit.

My worst story was one couple who told me they had a dog. That was fine. She was cute, responsible, lovely! Got along with all of ours here at the farm. Unbeknownst to us, this couple also had 2 ferrets that they kept upstairs in the second bedroom so we never saw them. The ferrets ATE the drywall, baseboards, carpet FLOORBOARDS! insulation, electrical lines - even the (now) exposed copper pipes for the plumbing had chew marks. The inside of that (antique, original) bedroom door was unbelievable as the ferrets tried to chew their way out and the owners kept nailing plywood over the top of the gaps.

$600 didn't even come close to covering the repair job.

Every landlord I know has stories like this. Every one of us.

Its the bad irresponsible pet owners who are making your life so difficult for you. I really hope you find a home though. Landlords who will take pets are out there but you have to persevere. Good luck

In fact, I've read quite a bit from studies on this issue, and landlords that don't allow pets, end up in worse shape because people sneak the pets in.. and then the poor landlords are left with no recourse or pet deposit. I think I'd rather allow pets, and hope to circumvent the people that sneak them in (so there is an agreement and deposits and such in place.) but you know, there will always be people that take advantage.

I can't imagine sneaking in two ferrets...

when they came to see the place, which was fine. I have zero experience with ferrets so I'm sure I would have said "yes" to those too since I didn't know how destructive they were (maybe not all ferrets but these two were).

I didn't put a restriction on the pets, I didn't ask for a big deposit ($600). They simply had to ask me about having a dog AND 2 ferrets but they never mentioned those.

It cost us thousands of dollars to repair the room enough to rent the house out again. Since we never rented the house for much more than it cost us to cover the mortgage and taxes, we were totally screwed.

Be prepared for a separate pet deposit.

I lived in apartments for years, but that was years ago. Even then, it was hard finding a place to accept pets. I had better luck with larger complexes than individually owned apts or small complexes. They had more units they needed to rent, I guess, so their rules were a little more lax. And since they were owned by corporations, they had the funds to spif up each apartment between owners.

Almost all the rentals I know of allow cats or small dogs with a hefty security deposit.

I have family out that way! I've found that the more sophisticated cities are pet friendly. I'm afraid I'm a total wimp when it comes to weather... if it's not 65-75 I fall apart.

If I weren't raised here, I probably wouldn't like the weather either. And to tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I like the cold and heat.

find pet friendly apartments(especially dogs) in the Boston area.

Guess we're not sophisticated enough.

Seriously. I fully "get" why landlords refuse to rent to pet owners (I am a pet owner, by the way) and my understanding comes from cleaning apartments and rental units after people moved out. I've had to scoop cat poop out of a bathroom with a shovel, and I have had to pull up carpets full of urine and feces left by dogs and cats. I've seen woodwork chewed by pets, and I have seen serious damage done to flooring--to the point it had to be removed completely--along with the SUB flooring--due to bad pet owners. I have seen a duplex where they had a dog that chewed everything--including the cabinet doors and the wood trim around doors.

Most landlords in my area will rent to you with a damage deposit of maybe one or two months rent. A lot of people scramble to come up with that, but it is usually enough of an investment that the renters will take reasonable care of the property. You see the garden variety stuff like not cleaning when they move out, or leaving stuff behind for the landlord to dispose of, but mostly people do at least expend some sort of effort to get that deposit back. The really big problem is that if the damage exceeds the amount of the deposit the effort to collect on the difference can be a huge effort that may not bear any fruit at all. Not to put too fine of a point on this, but how much do YOU think it'd take to re-do a kitchen because some dog chewed the cabinet doors up? How much does it cost to re-carpet an entire apartment because the cat or the dog was allowed to leave "deposits" everywhere? How much do you think it'd take to rip out an entire floor and sub-floor due to the reek of urine that cannot be removed any other way?

Most apartment and rental house owners are small business people. That cost to repair damages can make a huge difference to them, literally in some cases, enough to cost them that property. Imagine, if you will, what your reaction would be to walking into your house and finding it trashed. Imagine how it feels to know that you have to repair that damage in order to restore the property to any level of acceptability...

I fully "get" that we pet owners love our animals and want them with us, but I also fully understand why some landlords are so opposed to any kind of animals.


Laura

To this day, I miss the 4 legged dog far more than the 2 legged one.

But enough about me....

Point I'm making is this: contact yr local SPCA. In SF they have a list of pet friendly landlords. The ex found a great place for him and the huge furry canine.

Good luck in your search. Dogs and cats rule!

or dogs OK, 20# max.. We have a "dogette", and she's a better roommate than any of the humans i ever split the rent with.

I can say that a majority of our rentals accept pets. We try to talk all owners that we work for into accepting pets. Too high of a percentage of good renters own pets. We do require a non-refundable pet fee of $300.

That being said, places we rent with pets do not always come back to us with simple wear and tear. Often, pet owners do not notice the smell of their pet. This mostly occurs in places with carpet. Even a well cared for dog will leave a smell in the carpet. This smell will often not come out with normal carpet cleaning and makes it very difficult to rent without extra work.

If a property owner has ever rented to a dirty and untrained pet, they will most likely not rent to a pet owner again. The costs can be huge to prep for another tenant.

Good luck to you and all of the pets out there.

to be pet friendly.

we advertised on Craigslist...and allowed pets. There was a small dog in there last
year and the current tenants signed a 2 year lease and they have a golden retriever.

There are landlords out there who understand! Hope you can connect with one.