Last week we spoke about picking the perfect tenant, and a question that is coming up more and more is: Pets. Lots of people are calling pets by different names these days; some call them children and others call them support animals. Calling a pet by any other name than it is calls into questions about legality and risk to the landlord.
The graphic above is speaking about dogs, the original service animal. Service animals originated when blind people would use seeing eye dogs to guide them, and they needed to have their animals live with them. Therefore, service animals can not be inquired about except: Does your dog provide a service and What is your dog trained to do?
As we veer from Service Dogs to Emotional Support and Therapy animals, you find a lot of people claiming their cats, dogs, and other exotic animals as Emotional Support. Emotional Support Animals are animals that have been certified by a professional to be needed by the person for emotional support. Because the certification comes from a professional, they do have a certificate-but only some people can ask for the certificate. You as a landlord can ask about the emotional support animals.
Therapy animals are less asked for, from a landlord perspective, but are worth mentioning here. Therapy animals are allowed to generally be where animals are not allowed, but always ask before you bring your therapy animal and have prior agreement when possible.
No matter what name you call it, a pet is a pet. In this day and age, it is easy to discriminate based on pets to the average would be tenant. Our suggestion is to take their application in as a whole and if you like them, pets and all, but find them to be more of a risk because of their pet-just ask for more deposit and trust the tenants to be proper pet owners.
DRE#01848133-P: 949-864-6982 -E:preferredmanager@gmail.com-W: www.preferredmanager.com-Facebook-Twitter
The graphic above is speaking about dogs, the original service animal. Service animals originated when blind people would use seeing eye dogs to guide them, and they needed to have their animals live with them. Therefore, service animals can not be inquired about except: Does your dog provide a service and What is your dog trained to do?
As we veer from Service Dogs to Emotional Support and Therapy animals, you find a lot of people claiming their cats, dogs, and other exotic animals as Emotional Support. Emotional Support Animals are animals that have been certified by a professional to be needed by the person for emotional support. Because the certification comes from a professional, they do have a certificate-but only some people can ask for the certificate. You as a landlord can ask about the emotional support animals.
Therapy animals are less asked for, from a landlord perspective, but are worth mentioning here. Therapy animals are allowed to generally be where animals are not allowed, but always ask before you bring your therapy animal and have prior agreement when possible.
No matter what name you call it, a pet is a pet. In this day and age, it is easy to discriminate based on pets to the average would be tenant. Our suggestion is to take their application in as a whole and if you like them, pets and all, but find them to be more of a risk because of their pet-just ask for more deposit and trust the tenants to be proper pet owners.
DRE#01848133-P: 949-864-6982 -E:preferredmanager@gmail.com-W: www.preferredmanager.com-Facebook-Twitter
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