Ideally, you’ll talk to your property manager in Melbourne about establishing your rental property pet policy before you even begin advertising your rental home. You’ll definitely want to know about any pets before a tenant moves into the property. However, tenants aren’t always forthcoming about having pets, and sometimes they’ll acquire a pet after they move in, without informing you. Today, we’re talking about what you should do when you discover an unauthorized pet at your property.
Collect Evidence of the Pet
If you drive by a property and you see that a tenant has an unauthorized pet, you need to collect some sort of evidence. You can take a picture or a video, and do whatever you can to document that there’s a pet on the property.
Talk to the Tenant
After you collect the evidence and you are back at the office, call the tenant. Let them know that you were at the property earlier, and you saw the pet. Let them know that you’ll be posting a 7 Day Notice to Cure.
Decide Whether to Accept the Pet
At this point, we will post the 7 Day Notice to Cure at the property, and then we get in touch with the property owner to let them know what’s going on. We will ask the owner if pets are acceptable if the tenant wants to keep the animal and is willing to pay a pet fee. If the owner says yes, we tell the tenant that it’s possible to keep the pet, and we collect the appropriate fee. If the owner says no to pets, we let the tenant know they have those seven days to re-home the pet. If the tenant does not take care of this matter, we will have to proceed with an eviction because the tenant is in violation of the lease.
If you have any questions about pets or anything pertaining to Melbourne property management, please contact RE/MAX ELITE’s Property Management Division today!
