Dogs in rented houses

In my experience it is the agencies that are the problem.
We used an agency to advertise our house for rent, they had a approach from a family with a small dog. The agency recommended us against accepting them. We agreed to meet the family (including dog) and were happy to rent to them. We did take a larger deposit.
I think it helped that we are pet owners ourselves and had the difficulty of renting prviously and lying to a landlord about having a cat. There are understanding landlords out there - good luck with finding one with the right property.

Try searching on Zoopla, there is a filter for pets. Then you will find most listings will says pets considered, but that opens up potential options for you. This is how we found both of our last rented homes, and we have two dogs so it was more of a challenge (one of them being a Lab as well). You may get quite a few !!!8220;one small dog only!!!8221; replies but keep at it. You will definitely have to pay a higher deposit up front, something like ~£200 extra is my experience.

I believe that larger deposits for pet friendly rentals are soon to be banned (but OK for now), a cap of 6 weeks rent is going to be introduced. I was surprised when I read that, as it seems to penalise pet owners, because additional 'pet deposits' will apparently not be allowed. The article that I read, made the point that landlords can charge higher rents for tenants with pets, but that isn't particularly helpful for the tenant. Although I must admit that we don't allow pets, we recently had a flea infestation with our own dog, and it took about 3 months to get rid of them. The problem wasn't the fleas on the dog, it was with the carpets and upholstery. He now gets two flea treatments, the regular one which kills fleas, and now also 'program' which stops them breeding, so if the first method fails, it will be far easier to control the infestation (in fact, it will get to an infestation stage). Although that was the first time in over 12 years of owning a dog, but it was bad enough in our own home, it would have been a nightmare in one of our investment properties.

We rent with 2 (albeit small) dogs in a private rented 2 bed, and we've lived in 2 properties with them.

Our approach was when looking online, if there was no specific statement in the listing that pets were not allowed, we would contact agent and after stating that we are interested in the property and immediately disclose up front about the dogs. The agent would usually say they would have to check with LL, or in some cases they would already know the landlord's stance. That would help with filtering straight away and avoid wasting our own time and the agents time. Some said they would require a larger deposit - some have no problems whatsoever and just standard deposit required.

Keep an eye out for properties with gardens or outdoor space - sometimes a LL is more open to pets if a garden is available as they know the 'business' will be done outside (if appropriately house trained of course!). We have a private garden with our 2 bed in London and its a life saver - couldn't imagine renting with dogs without a garden.

Keep looking and keep chasing those agents. At one point I thought it would be impossible (agents asking 'do you NEED to keep the dogs' - as if just getting rid of them was an option), but it can work out!