This is how I felt as a Landlord … that’s what the pet rent is for, don’t worry about me … or if it’s a companion animal, don’t expect your security deposit back …
I’d look you straight in the eye and tell you I don’t have to live with it … then you’d look straight back at me and point out I have twenty cats …
So, nevermind … besides it’s the peacocks who make the biggest mess on my own carpets … not the best of indoor pets …
Some states limit the amount of a deposit. In my state, the total of all deposits may not exceed one month’s rent. No matter what you call it, be it security deposit, cleaning deposit, pet deposit, whatever; the sum may not exceed one month’s rent. That also includes charging the last month’s rent in advance. Basically, move in costs can not exceed two months rent.
So if they charge one month’s rent as a security deposit, they could not charge any additional pet deposit.
Nice to have such a consumer protection. Poorer adults have an extremely difficult time coming up with deposits, and not being able to afford a deposit traps them in an endless cycle of debt.
Alas … this will put inflationary pressure on rents … if I can’t target bad tenants for the extra expense, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay out of my own pocket … I’m going to make everybody pay in the form of higher rents … if all the landlords do this, the poorer adults will be homeless …
The problem is that landlords illegally withholding security deposits at the end of the tenancy, instead of returning it … only one in a hundred tenants will sue … snowflakes know not what they do …
Let’s see a show of hands … which of you who rent housing know where to find the law regulating your rental contract … six out of how many thousands !!! … more than I thought …
Eh. The actual reason there are so many homeless is from laws limiting the construction of new housing. In areas without those laws, there is plenty of housing and rents are affordable. No deposit apartments are common - I moved into one in college station one time. It was also only 800 a month for a 2 bedroom.
And I just assume I won’t get my security deposit back and act accordingly. (I don’t attempt to avoid minor damage, like drilling holes to mount my TV, etc, because I know the converse is true - once I move out, if the landlord claims I owe more than the deposit they are going to have a very difficult time collecting) In practice suing is not practical for a number of reasons.
Basically, since I know that 9 times out of 10, they are going to keep my security deposit even if I leave the place spotless, I might as well get my money’s worth. My landlord even had me sign a paper about some bullshit “painting fee” that I will be charged when I move out.
800? I pay less than that for a fairly large two bedroom with a walk-in closet and a full kitchen, not an efficiency-- and that includes the pet rent I pay, plus the charge for my covered parking space. It’s a secure building, too, which is to say, it has its own security. It’s not in the most desirable part of town, but it’s not in the worst, either. Indianapolis has a huge gap between the two.
I have always gotten my security deposit back, FWIW.
I’ve lived in my current apartment for 6 years, with no plans to move any time soon, and I know that when I leave, they will replace the carpet, the 3.5 gallon toilet and the flooring underneath, the stove, and who knows what else, because it wasn’t new when I arrived and they generally do this anyway with long-term tenants.
For a while, my next-door neighbors were a middle-aged couple and one of their adult children. She had never lived in a rental property before (except for military housing when her husband was in the service) and when they moved out, she was afraid she wouldn’t get her deposit back because they had left nail holes in the walls, and there was a stain on the carpet from when her son spilled something and he didn’t get it completely out. I told her that this place probably wouldn’t charge for normal maintenance (they would, among other things, paint all the walls and professionally clean the carpet before anyone else moved in). You get in trouble when you do things like kick holes in the walls, take the refrigerator with you, dump paint all over the carpet, etc.
Right … thus my superlative reputation among all class levels in my community …
I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time sitting in eviction court waiting my turn … and every once in a great while a case comes up where the former tenant sued the landlord for security deposit … with pictures … the judge looks and says the place looks clean, $500 cleaning charge is unreasonable; damages are normal, $800 in repairs is unreasonable; $200 to change the locks is unreasonable … $1,500 security deposit should have been returned …
Triple damages …
Judgement for the tenant for $4,500 plus court costs, legal fees and prevailing party fees … I saw one landlord get hammered for $60,000 is just fifteen short minutes on a somewhat different issue …
The down side of course is winning a lawsuit against a landlord becomes a permanent public record … makes is tough to finding another rental unit … renting to a tenant who knows that much of the law is as bad as renting to lawyers … never a good idea …
At least from the few times I’ve read the conditions from a landlord for deciding if they will rent to you, they never seem like the landlord is giving themselves that kind of discretion. Aren’t landlords forced to tell you the reason they denied you? If the reason is from you exercising your rights in the courts and winning…that’s basically just the next landlord issuing you a check. What judge is not going to award you damages if you produce denial letters stating flat out the reason you can’t get housing is because the landlord has decided to snub their nose at the court system?
Housing rentals are not job interviews. With job interviews, they can illegally discriminate and claim they found a “more qualified candidate”. I don’t see how they can do that for housing.
Forced to tell? Or forced to tell the truth? Big difference.
Pet owners are in a tiny amount of denial about how the rest of us feel about their animals pissing on stuff the rest of us will be using at some point. My multiple pet-owning sister “gifted” me with a lot of furniture her animals had sprayed or scratched the fuck out of; I always managed to not take it. My other sister had a cat that essentially used the entire basement as its cat box. She was unable to sell the house at its full value and I think it was demolished by the eventual buyer, a neighbor who just wanted the land and not the house. The previous posters in this thread? Boy, can I tell which ones own pets!
I’m not in denial about how you might feel about fur on your stuff-- I don’t care. Don’t expect me to offer you anything.
As far as pissing on stuff: I have never owned an animal that wasn’t fixed as absolutely soon as the vet would do it (save for some rehomed animals adopted as adults, who were already fixed, but I can’t say when it was done), so I have never had an animal that did territorial pissing. I also have never had a cat that peed outside the box, because I change the litter boxes in a timely manner, even back when I had seven cats and three boxes, and had to change them every week, and scoop them twice a week.
Now, I’ve had puppies I was housebreaking that peed, but I did my best to minimize is by taking them out every hour (three hours at night), and crating them when I was gone. Very few accidents indoors. The ones that happened, I cleaned up right away with vinegar, and I have never housebroken a dog in a house with carpeting. Once my dogs have been housebroken, they have NEVER had accidents-- other than one very geriatric dog who pooped on the linoleum once, a couple of days before she died.
I wish my son were as good at hitting the toilet as the cats are at hitting the box, albeit, since I started making him clean the bathroom, his aim has improved remarkably. Just this morning, though, he spilled red juice on the kitchen floor, which thankfully did not stain, but he griped about cleaning it up. No pet has even spilled juice on the floor.
I get that maybe your relatives were not the most responsible pet owners, but not everyone is like that.
Ok from the contracts I skimmed, the reasons were verifiable.
Nothing was subjective. Either you have been evicted before or you have not. Either you make enough income or you don’t. Either you have a conviction for specified classes of crimes or you do not.
So if you don’t have those things, but you did sue a past landlord and won, what is the new landlord going to put in the blank? If it’s something that isn’t true, and you send a response with evidence that it isn’t true, how are they going to respond?
And for that matter, trolling court records isn’t something that is free to do. Paying to search every civil court record to see if a landlord was involved is not a cheap thing to do - the global search is expensive, but what’s really expensive is sending runners to a courthouse clerk to get the actual records.
Wait, does neutering stop marking behavior? My dog is neutered and marks all the time. Not indoors (at least not after the first few days of having him, when he just marked inside the house all over the place) but he does mark on his walks.
I’ve never seen an apartment where the wood floor had extensive scratching and peeing damage from a toddler.
“After I accepted your application, I discovered the bathroom floor needs replacing … the unit is no longer available to rent” …
What you’ve described above is what landlords are supposed to do … yet many don’t … I can only speak to my own State’s laws and there is a little wiggle room, not much, but a little … the main purpose for the objective documented facts for screening is to provide a positive defense against discrimination lawsuits … if the landlord gets sued for racism, he can prove he’s innocent …
Here, landlords can only consider court cases where the perspective tenant has lost … which makes sense, winning a case says nothing about you, losing case speaks volumes …
Really? … here it’s free, go to any county courthouse, sit at the terminal and you can get a brief summary of every case for the past 35 or 40 years, state-wide … and if the case was tried in that courthouse, you can write the case number down from the terminal, hand it to the clerk and they’ll fetch you the case file and let you read it … copies of anything in the case file will cost you 25¢ each …
Oregon’s a small state … I tried this down in California and could only get information from within the county I was in at the time, but it was still free … if you’re hiring people to do this, of course it’s expensive, but if you do it yourself, it’s all free (or should be, I can only speak for Oregon) …
How many apartments have you seen that have crayon marks and finger paints on the walls from cats?
How many cats drive stolen cars through the living room wall … true story, arrived at the vacant unit only to find a 1978 Buick in the living room …
Toonces!
It’s expensive to do a nationwide search. Yeah, if they sued your landlord down the street using the same local courts, sure. You can find out. But if it’s a different state, harder.