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
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