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How to Identify Pet Damage in Your Rental Property

Learn about the different types of pet damage you might find in your rental property.

If you own a rental property and allow pets, you probably have encountered pet damage in your home. Maybe you’ve had your own pet damage a home of yours, too. Pet damage can include things like excessive pet hair left at the property or urine stains in the carpet or carpet pad. These things are relatively easy to fix, but sometimes hard to spot.

At Good Life, we understand that some owners may be hesitant to accept pets due to the potential damage they may cause. Over 50% of renters have pets so it’s usually a good idea to allow them in your property. It opens up your potential tenant pool and gives you more chances to select the best qualified tenant.

Pet Hair

Pet hair/fur can be one of the trickier issues to detect unless you have strong sensitivity to pet dander. You may not even notice this until the new tenants move in and complain of allergies. The easiest place to find pet hair is the area along the walls, where the carpet meets the baseboards.

It’s usually easy to vacuum up. Some carpet cleaners will have a specific vacuum designed to pick up pet hair. This vacuum, called a HEPA vacuum, is great at lifting very small particles out of the carpet as to not leave behind any residue.

Carpet Damage

This is the most common and easily noticed pet damage we see. This is usually in the form of pet urine. You’ll likely discover this after the carpets have been cleaned because the urine that has soaked through the carpet into the carpet pad has now risen to the surface.

You can tell if this is the kind of pet damage you have by smelling the area and lifting up the carpet to see possible stains underneath. If you’re not comfortable lifting the carpet yourself, ask your carpet cleaner to check it out and take photos.

Door and Frame Damage

Another area that pets might damage is the doors or door frames, specifically on the exterior door to the backyard. This might happen if a tenant leaves their pet out in the yard for most of the day. The dog (or cat) will scratch at the door and frame to get in.

Landscape Damage

If the tenant has a dog, there might be damage to the sprinklers or fences. Look for scratch marks, tears, and holes in your yard fences. Be sure to check the grass for any animal feces as well.

We hope this blog helped clarify what kinds of pet damage you might encounter at your property. For more landlord education videos, visit our YouTube page!

For helpful tips on acquiring great tenants, check out our blog, Tips for Getting the Best Tenant For Your Rental Property.

If you found this article helpful, follow us on social media. We post daily tips to help you manage your own rental property:

Steve Welty

Steve Welty is the founder and CEO of Good Life Property Management. Since its establishment in 2013, Steve and his team have made owning rental property easy for over 1,000 San Diego homeowners.Their purpose is Life Improved–creating opportunity, enjoyment, and impact for their community is what matters most. DRE #01744610

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Hey guys, Dave here with Good Life Property Management. Today we’re going to be talking about pet damage, ways to avoid it, ways to inspect for it, and the benefits of allowing pets in your property. Hey, if you liked the video, be sure to click the like button down below. Also if you want to see more videos from Good Life, be sure to subscribe. Here at Good Life Property Management, we love pets. We’re also in a market that’s very pet friendly about half of renters in this market do have pets. So allowing pets in your property is going to open you up to just that many more perspective tenants. Now with the greater marketplace, it does come greater responsibility and possible risk. Here’s for the most common pet damage that we find upon move out. The first thing we’re talking about is pet hair. This is one that’s often overlooked. It’s real difficult to detect out move out. Unless you’re highly sensitive or have really keen allergies to pet dander or cat hair, this one you may not even notice until after the tenants move in and they start complaining. Usually you’re going to find pet hair along the edges of the walls where the carbon meets the baseboards. What I like to do is go in there and just take a little pinch there and whatever I pull up, I’m usually going to find pet hair. It’s easy to vacuum up. Most of your professional carbon cleaners will have a high performance vacuum. A lot of them even recommend using a hepavac, which is a vacuum cleaner with a filter on it that allows for smaller particulates to be trapped inside the filter, less releasing into the room and causing the same issue that you’re there for. The second one is going to be actual carpet damage. This one is probably the most common and the easiest to see. Generally when you walk into a property, you can usually smell the pet damage already. By pet damage, I’m talking about pet urine. Most often cause by dogs big and small, especially if there’s been a puppy at the property. After the carpets have been cleaned, it’s even more detectable because the urine that was soaked into the carpet pad has now come up through the pad and the carpet. Telltale signs. You may see some dark units in some areas. Generally it’s going to be in a circular pad and you’re not going to see a square here or rectangle there. What you want to do is get down and actually get your face in it. But sniff board, you’ll be able to telltale sign of pet odor and even pull the carpet back to inspect. If you’re not comfortable pulling the carpet back because you’re not sure if there’s damage or not, have your carpet guy go out there and pull it back and reinstall it. When they do pull it out, make sure if you’re not there that they take foes of it so you can charge the tent and forward afterwards. Another common area where we’re finding pet damage is on doors and door frames, especially on the X-chair. A lot of times people go away from the day and leave their pets outside. The pets will often claw out or blind around the door frame because they want back in and they want the attention while you guys are eating dinner. Make sure as you check out the inside of the house, you’re also checking from the outside in. Patios are notorious for this. A lot of times pets will act on a small patio and they’re really excited and start pawing around the door frames. As you can see in the photos here. Also just inside too, pets do love where carpet seems or where they glue it down. There’s something in that odor that dogs are drawn to and they’ll dig little holes. Use your right and the other where the door closes as someone’s leaving it in a bedroom. One of the last things is landscape damage. This could be anything from burn marks from urine. It could be holes that a dog has done. Dogs like to choose sprinklers. Dogs will also destroy fences, scratching them, knocking planks off. This is also something you want to check after a dog has been at the property. A lot of times it sounds like dog feces or cat feces in gardening areas. You also want to check for that in charge of 10 and appropriately. If you have any questions here at GoodLafero, always here to answer them. Again, if you like what you saw today, hit the like button or hit the subscribe button and we’ll see you at the next video.