Renting with animals - why is it almost impossible?

Lopéz said:
Loads of people here rent with cats and dogs. In.... wait for it...flats! Not sure OcUK is generally prepared for this information though.
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Which is great, but the problem here is (and I’m just speaking about my rental, although I guess it’s the same for many other flats etc) the lease rules state no (certain) pets.
Even if I let my tenant have a cat/dog, the management company wouldn’t allow it and would take the situation to court as I personally found out.
I believe from some of your insightful posts in the landlord thread that renting over here is viewed/handled very differently to where you reside?
 
SuperElectric said:
.....I think now is the appropriate time to post an update:

Gpu-dog.jpg


Just taking him out for a walk. Hopefully I don't bump into the landlord, or it's curtains for ol' Chippy :cry:
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THIS is what AI was made for.
 
JonRGV250 said:
Which is great, but the problem here is (and I’m just speaking about my rental, although I guess it’s the same for many other flats etc) the lease rules state no (certain) pets.
Even if I let my tenant have a cat/dog, the management company wouldn’t allow it and would take the situation to court as I personally found out.
I believe from some of your insightful posts in the landlord thread that renting over here is viewed/handled very differently to where you reside?
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Yeah it's viewed very differently - and I don't have a strong wrong vs right feeling.

I rented in the UK for years and there were no issues - I'm definitely not anti-landlord or anything like that; the UK's housing situation is far more complicated than the odd rogue landlord.

Here, renting is seen as the norm - in Vienna, around half the housing stock is owned by the state, and only about 20-35% give or take (stats vary) are actually owned by individuals, renting is the overwhelming norm.

The whole setup is quite different really.

We have 3 key types of housing in the city:

1) Gemeindebau - this is our version of a council flat; there are rules about maximum earnings and so on to qualify for one. The standards are fine. You are generally required to buy your own kitchen, which is a bit of a strange concept coming from the UK, and when you leave it's common to sell the kitchen to the new occupant, or take it with you (!) I still cannot get my head around why anyone thinks this is a good idea

2) Genossenschaft - This is shared ownership with a twist. A co-op owns the building, you put a big deposit down (usually 15-20k) and that amortises at 1% per year. In the mean time you pay a heavily reduced rent compared to a private setup. Again there are some rules about who qualifies including how long you have lived in the city and how much you earn. Again, the kitchen thing.... mental. Anyway, at the end of your term (usually 10 or 20 years) you usually get a buy-out option to keep the flat, so it's a bit like car leasing. If you want to leave, you can either leave it up to the owner of the building, or, more commonly, you advertise it on our equivalent of Gumtree and there will be a queue out the door of people wanting it. Everyone prefers it this way as there are no transfer fees, no hassle, and you get to come to a deal (if you want) to flog some of your existing furnishings and the kitchen to the new owner. We did exactly this last year. When I say cheap rent, a mid-city 45 sqm studio flat was costing us 360 Euro PCM to rent. Try that in London!

3) Private rent - More like renting a flat in the UK, pay money, live in apartment

Generally things like pets, redecorating, even making fairly big alterations like interior wall changes is generally acceptable. There used to be a law about having to redecorate it white when you move out but the courts said that was unreasonable and booted it. So now it just has to be plain/inoffensive

We still get chancer landlords claiming you owe them 5k because there is a 5mm chip in the wood flooring, so all the usual UK stuff applies, but the biggest difference is the absolute zero stigma attached to renting here - it's just considered totally normal.

EDIT
Eviction talk over unauthorised pets etc is basically unheard of. Like, really unheard of. Generally if you pay your rent, everything is fine. There are no inspections (generally), unless you rent privately off some old biddy maybe. Oh and if you have a foreign sounding surname be prepared for a struggle, Austrians (though they won't admit it) like renting to Austrians. Again, that's a private landlord issue, you won't get it on a co-op/company owned building.
 
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cheesyboy said:
Yes, you can't sell it, but you should be able to live a normal family life in it. Like by owning a ******* dog.

Landlords are out of control and wield a lot of power generally, so it might not be something in our gift to change, but we should NOT be in here defending this nonsense.
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Some landlords may be out of control but some tenants are too. You can moan all you like about landlords but I suspect for every bad landlord there’s at least one bad tenant so it works both ways.
 
Renting is stupid.

Wouldn't be too bad if it was reasonable and affordable % of earnings, but for those part time national minimum wage, literally it would be working one job just for the rent alone. It's literal slavery
 
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