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What are the best types of floors for income properties accepting pets? Pet Tip 2

Hello, I'm Daniel Wise, and this is Bob Maguire, and we're Income Property Advisors. Today we're talking about some tips that you should consider before renting to someone with a pet.

So so last the last vlog that we had, we talked about kind of the outside area of a rental property for pets and best practices, depending on what the property type is that you live in, whether it's single family or condo. So this this vlog, we're going to talk about the interior.

Understanding How Pets Effect Your Rental Property

Typically like a property manager like us, handles a lot of apartments, we handle a lot of different types of real estate and so the pet thing in Southern California is a big deal. Everybody seems to have a pet. I would say, of the properties that we rent, whether it's a class A apartment building that's potentially, you know, an investment owned type asset or if it's or if it's even a smaller mom and pop owned building pets are constantly being brought to us.

Primary Concern: Interior of the Property

Flooring is a really important thing to consider. So right now carpeting is is going out and it's going out at a pretty fast pace. Across our portfolio, nearly every single lease term that we do, we're replacing flooring on those terms. We're going to do it either in AVP, which is a vinyl plank, or we're going to some type of a laminate depending on the building that we're in and what the building can handle.

Should I Accept Pets with Carpet?

If you're telling me that if you have carpet, you should probably not consider a pet or you should be in the position to replace it when that tenant leaves? You definitely want to you definitely want to consider, you know, what's going to be best for the unit and what type of impact you're bringing in.

  • So if you're if you're bringing in a cat or something like that, carpet's not going to be the best. Right, because cats tend to scratch it and, you know, they scratch on that.

What is the best flooring for Pets?

  1. EVP
  2. Laminate
  3. Tile

The EVP and the laminate are by far the best material if you're going to have pets. And luckily, it's pretty common these days. You see a lot of it in most units. Most homes are built with it. So if we're talking about flooring, ideally a hard surface flooring is going to be always your best bet. Right? So either a laminate and EVP and possibly a tile and something that you have in your unit, which we get in Southern California. So some places do have tile, some have laminate. Somehow EVP, if you're in a position and you can afford to change it out and this goes across whether you have a pet or not.

Our recommendation is to always go to a vinyl plank, if you can.

It's very popular. It looks nice. It gives you a uniform floor throughout a unit. It modernizes it. And it's a it's a it's a very long term solution to solving some of these pet issues that do come up OK.

Hardwood Floors

Another thing to be careful about is hardwood floors. If you have a unit that has a really lovely hardwood floors in it still or maybe a remodeled unit that you have been able to maintain those floors and probably something you should consider with someone who's renting a pet because that flooring can be very expensive and sometimes even impossible to replace.

What if I Cannot Find a Tenant Without a Pet or service animal?

The other thing is, too, is that if you're in a situation and you know, you've been waiting for a tenant and a tenant shows up and they have a pet and that pet is a service type animal and you have carpet in your unit, now would be the time to consider replacing flooring. You know, that's a hard thing to go through, right? If you've been waiting, your income's down, things like that. But the long term, you know, the long term value of having that type of flooring and not having to worry about it again on each turn, having to clean carpet, having to determine if the tenant has a pet who's getting charged for what, not that it really matters. We would just charge straight up for the carpet cleaning.

Covering Your Costs

So if you're going to allow pets and you're going to have carpeting, you have to take a pet deposit. You can take a pet deposit in California in one of two ways you can take pet rent or you can take a deposit that is a reasonable deposit for wear and tear and damage that could potentially occur from a pet. Which I guess is a third tip.

But at the end of the day, it's those types of things that you need to consider when accepting a pet.

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