@Mike Franco My observation, in the markets in which I own investment property, is that more and more apartment complexes and more private landlords are taking pets at little or no extra rent. Extra security deposit, sure, but not extra rent. Thus, I think this is just another price that is ultimately set by the local market...and in mine, there is no way I'll be able to charge an extra 10%. Maybe $15/month.
I've gone back and forth over the years regarding whether to accept pets at all...but lately, my position is generally "no pets" for this exact reason: no compensation for potential extra wear. But it sure does exclude a huge portion of potential renters.
I charge between $25 and $75 a month as it is different in different markets and different price points. The $25 is about a $600 rental and the $75 is a $1,600 rental. That's great monthly bonus money in my mind.
We were charging 250 animal fee (non refundable) for an $800 ish rental. We reduced that to $200 and $20 per month per animal. (two max). The "fee" is not per animal but the animal rent is. We prefer no pets but they always seem to get into the property anyway so we just started an animal policy a few years ago.
We charge $50/month first pet and $25/month 2nd pet with 2 pet maximum along with $200 extra deposit (refundable) in our units that we allow pets (units with decent size individual yards).
These are for units with rents that vary from $1500 to almost $3k.
We use PetScreening.com to discourage bogus ESAs. We just started using it recently and, on the one rental since starting using it, it seemed to accomplish our goal. We had zero applicants that claimed to have ESAs.