How to Deal with Man’s Best Friend

What we are going to talk about today are pets. We do get a lot of owners that ask us a lot about pets and how to handle them. First thing I’ll tell you is you definitely want to make sure that you have the proper forms. We use a standard TREC agreement, Texas Real Estate Commission and we always have the addendum for the pet. You always have in writing, the size of the dog, how many dogs, it’s very, very important. One of the reasons that it is so important is your insurance. Your insurance will drop you if the animal is on the dangerous breeds list and we’ve seen a lot more insurance companies that are actually doing spot checks, going to the property and actually wanting access or looking over the fence to see how many animals are in the house and what kind of animals there are. So you want to make sure you have the right animal in the house based on what the tenant told you, some owners require a picture of the pet every quarter to make sure it is still the same animal, this way when we our inspections we make sure the pet matches all the pictures.

Another thing is the pet deposit or the pet fee. No one really knows the best way to handle that. We suggest taking a non refudable pet fee. No matter what anybody says about fluffy the cat or the dog you will always have damage done to the house and if there is a pet fee they don’t get that back. Animals are going to damage the house statistically, so we always suggest getting a pet fee. There have been many instances that when the property is turned back over to the owner nothing appears wrong, but things pop up after. Fleas and Ticks are always a big problem and can be expensive if gone untreated for long periods of time.

Sometimes if a person has two animals, the best practice is to take a full pet fee on the first animal and then you can take a smaller fee on the second animal. Sometimes you can take a pet fee on the first animal and then just take a smaller deposit on the second animal. Always keep in mind bigger dogs are going create more damage than smaller dogs. The bigger the animal, I would say the bigger the fee. Even if they tell you that it’s an outside dog, it doesn’t matter. There is going be issues and you always want to take a pet fee and you also want to periodically inspect the property. You want to make sure, look at the dog food bowls, look at the water bowls. See how many there are. If they have five dog food bowls, probably its more than one little chihuahua living in the house.