Does not allow pets…

The one that almost put us off pets for life….

Whether to allow pets in a rental property or not is often just a case of either personal preference from the landlord, the suitability of the property for pets or down to the local lettings market.

We owned a property that we ran as a small HMO, all young adult professionals, you might think that they would be able to get on and sort out any minor issues.

But no, for some reason the first time we let the place as an HMO the people we had in there would seemingly argue about anything – then try to draw us in with constant complaints about each other and requests that we address the offending behaviour.

It went on for some months, becoming frankly more and more pathetic in their nit picking at each other.

Which culminated with us having to attend one evening for a household summit over a goldfish…

One girl, a 21 year old veterinary nurse, kept a small tank of goldfish in the kitchen.

There had already been complaints from one tenant about their perceived welfare (a couple had died), another tenant complained about having them in the kitchen as he felt it was insanitary, her personal complaints that someone had been doing something to them that had killed some of them.

We suggested that maybe she keep them in her bedroom instead – that was not suitable we were informed, as the pump would apparently keep her awake.

So, there we were, having to spend an evening officiating over a meeting concerning the one remaining goldfish.

It became so apparent that these people could not live together, we took the bold move of giving them all notice to move out (along with the goldfish) and started again.

This time and since, with absolutely no pets and a very strict tenant selection criteria, which has served us well to this day.