The Great Apartment Hunt of 2014, Part II: Dog-Unfriendly London

Who wouldn’t want this little creature?

 

After we narrowed down the neighborhood range, we started going to apartment showings. At first I casually mentioned to agents that we had a dog, but 2 things quickly became evident:

1) Your average letting agent doesn’t have enough information about an apartment to know if it will accept a dog
2) Most apartments in central London will not accept a dog

#1 is due to a combination of dog restrictions at multiple levels and agent disorganization, possibly exacerbated by laziness. In order for a given flat to accept a dog, first the owner of the apartment must allow a dog. This isn’t too difficult; usually they just seem to want an extra 2 weeks deposit. If the flat is a freehold, this should be the only hurdle.

However, most flats in central London are leaseholds, meaning that the “owner” has a proprietary lease from a freeholder who actually owns the ground and common area of the building. If this is the case, the owner’s lease agreement with the freeholder must allow dogs, which is much less common. In one case, the freehold did not allow dogs, but there was the possibility of getting that changed if ALL of the leaseholders agreed. This, of course, was impossible to coordinate.

Your average letting agent does not have access to the necessary information about whether a dog is allowed, so they can’t or don’t bother to filter properties based on this requirement.  That means that we saw a lot of places that didn’t actually allow dogs, which was a huge waste of time.  Even when we asked ahead of time about dogs, the agents would only check with the landlord, while the primary restriction was really at the freehold level.  This was hugely annoying, and something to watch out for if you’re house-hunting with a dog in central London.

#2 seems to be cultural and particular to central London. We had heard that dog ownership was perfectly common in the UK. However, this appears to be true only on the outskirts of London through to the countryside; central London is quite dog unfriendly. Most flats are rented furnished, and the owners of the furniture don’t want dogs on their furniture for obvious reasons. Still, even unfurnished places mostly did not allow dogs. All told, I would estimate that 90-95% of flats I inquired about do not allow dogs.

Next part in the series: actual apartments!