Pet-friendly units rent faster and stay filled longer, so most portfolios already allow pets. The open question is not whether to allow them. It is how to charge for them in a way that still does something the day a claim comes in.
Three models are in common use: pet rent, a pet deposit, and a pet damage waiver. They look interchangeable on a lease. They behave very differently once a dog has chewed through the baseboards.
Pet rent collects money and covers nothing
Pet rent is a flat monthly add-on, usually somewhere between $25 and $50 per pet. It is easy to implement and it is predictable, which is why so many portfolios default to it.
But pet rent is not insurance. It is rent. There is no defined coverage, no claims process, and no relationship between what you collected and what the repair costs. A dog that scratches up hardwood and destroys a set of baseboards can outrun a full lease term of pet rent in an afternoon.
It also does nothing for liability. If a resident's dog bites a guest in the courtyard, the pet rent you collected is already spent and the medical and legal costs land somewhere else.
Pet deposits are capped, and the cap is shrinking
The usual fallback is the pet deposit. That has two problems. It is capped by state law in most places, and several states are actively limiting what can be charged as a pet deposit or pet fee at all. Whatever is left is often already earmarked for a wear-and-tear dispute.
A deposit also generates no revenue, because it is refundable. It sits on your books as an obligation, not income.
What a pet damage waiver actually reimburses
A pet damage waiver is structured the way a policy is. The resident opts in and pays a non-refundable monthly fee, billed alongside rent, and the program carries defined reimbursements behind it. The Beagle Insurance pet damage waiver program works this way.
Beagle's program reimburses accidental pet damage to the unit at $1,500 per occurrence, and that limit sits on every pricing tier rather than only the expensive one. Bodily injury to a third party starts at $10,000 and can be raised to $40,000 in $10,000 steps, at $5 a month each. Bodily injury applies to on-premises incidents only, so a bite that happens two miles away on a walk is outside the program.
There are no breed exclusions, as long as your team has approved the pet. That matters more than it sounds. Breed-restricted programs exclude some of the most common dogs in any pet-friendly portfolio, which either shrinks your applicant pool or quietly leaves those residents with nothing behind them.
Because the limits are defined upfront, there is a real claims process. Claims are filed online through the Beagle Portal rather than argued over at move-out, and the repair is paid for through the program instead of clawed back from a resident who may not have the money anyway.
Comparison at a glance
What the Beagle pet damage waiver program costs, and what it earns
Pricing is set by pet rating rather than a single flat fee, so a well-behaved older dog is not priced the same as an unscreened one. Every tier carries the same $1,500 accidental damage limit.
The economics land at $12,000 or more for every 100 residents enrolled. Because it is a monthly fee rather than a one-time deposit, it recurs for the life of the lease, and it either replaces existing pet fees or sits on top of them. If you want bodily injury cover on its own, without the damage reimbursement, that is $3 a month.
You can model this against your own door count in the Portfolio Revenue Calculator.
The part pet rent can never do
Screening. Every pet in the program is screened for breed, size and behaviour at no additional cost, which gives you something pet rent structurally cannot: visibility into what is actually living in your units. It is also what makes rating-based pricing possible in the first place, and what lets the program run without breed exclusions.
Which one is right for your portfolio
If your pet-friendly unit count is small and static, pet rent is defensible. You are carrying the risk knowingly and there is not much of it.
As that count grows, the maths changes. Pet ownership among renters keeps climbing, deposit caps are tightening, and every additional pet-friendly unit adds exposure that pet rent was never built to absorb. A waiver moves that exposure off the property and still generates monthly revenue, priced against real coverage rather than an arbitrary flat fee.
The short version
The honest comparison is not which one makes more money, because pet rent and waiver fees land in a similar range. It is which one is doing something the day a claim comes in. Pet rent collects. A pet damage waiver reimburses, and with Beagle Insurance that means up to $1,500 for damage per occurrence and from $10,000 for bodily injury on the premises, with no breed exclusions on an approved pet.
Frequently asked questions
It is a pet liability and pet damage program Beagle Insurance runs for property managers. Residents opt in and pay a monthly fee billed alongside rent, and the program reimburses accidental pet damage to the unit up to $1,500 per occurrence and on-premises bodily injury from $10,000, upgradeable to $40,000. Pet screening is included at no extra cost.
This article is general information for property managers, not insurance advice. Program terms, limits, pricing, and availability vary by property and state; check your specific program configuration for what applies.