What pet rent actually costs
Median pet rent across 1,386 apartment communities is $25 a month, and the first year costs $900 once deposits and fees are counted. The number that surprised us is further down: 79% of them publish a price before they publish which dogs they allow.
What it costs a month
Across the 1,386 communities that publish a figure, the median is $25 a month. The full range runs $10 to $80. 0 of them — 0% — charge no monthly pet rent at all, which is worth knowing before you accept the first number a leasing office says.
We report the median rather than the average on purpose. Pet rent is right-skewed: a handful of properties charge well over $100 and pull an average up to a number almost nobody actually pays.
What it costs to walk in the door
Two separate charges, and they are not the same thing. A deposit is refundable in principle; a one-time fee never is. Median deposit is $300 across 571 communities, and the median non-refundable fee is $350 across 1,111.
The first year, which is the number that matters
Deposit, plus the one-time fee, plus twelve months of pet rent: a median of $900.
That figure is calculated per community and then medianed, using only the 292 communities that publish all three charges. It is deliberately not the median deposit added to the median fee added to twelve median rents — that arithmetic describes a property that does not exist.
The finding we did not expect
The money is not the interesting part. This is: 79% of these communities publish fees but say nothing at all about which breeds they allow, and 87% say nothing about a weight limit. They will tell you what a dog costs before they will tell you whether your dog is allowed.
You will not find that number anywhere else, and the reason is dull but important: almost every other source records a missing policy as "no restrictions". We record it as unknown, because those are opposite claims and confusing them is what sends someone with a shepherd to a leasing office that rejects them, out of an application fee.
By city
A city appears here once we hold at least 8 published pet-rent figures for it. 84 cities are in the directory but below that line, and are left out rather than given a median built from a handful of properties.
| City | Median pet rent | Range | Communities |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | $75 | $50–$80 | 15 |
| Los Angeles, CA | $50 | $50–$75 | 58 |
| San Diego, CA | $50 | $35–$60 | 42 |
| Seattle, WA | $50 | $35–$55 | 56 |
| Las Vegas, NV | $45 | $25–$50 | 25 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | $45 | $40–$50 | 32 |
| Phoenix, AZ | $40 | $10–$55 | 54 |
| Portland, OR | $40 | $35–$60 | 32 |
| Denver, CO | $35 | $35–$35 | 68 |
| Philadelphia, PA | $35 | $30–$65 | 26 |
| Allen, TX | $25 | $15–$30 | 9 |
| Atlanta, GA | $25 | $15–$35 | 64 |
| Austin, TX | $25 | $10–$35 | 104 |
| Charlotte, NC | $25 | $15–$35 | 136 |
| Dallas, TX | $25 | $10–$35 | 52 |
| Denton, TX | $25 | $25–$25 | 10 |
| Fort Worth, TX | $25 | $20–$35 | 27 |
| Houston, TX | $25 | $15–$40 | 144 |
| Irving, TX | $25 | $15–$25 | 9 |
| Nashville, TN | $25 | $20–$50 | 48 |
| Orlando, FL | $25 | $15–$35 | 49 |
| Plano, TX | $25 | $20–$25 | 12 |
| Raleigh, NC | $25 | $15–$35 | 63 |
| San Antonio, TX | $25 | $10–$35 | 70 |
| Frisco, TX | $23 | $10–$25 | 12 |
How this was counted, and what it is not
It is not a national average. These are the communities we have researched — weighted towards large management companies, towards the metros we started in, and towards properties that publish anything at all. Every figure on this page describes this dataset and nothing wider.
- Unknown is never treated as free. A community that does not publish a charge is excluded from that figure, not counted as a zero. Each number states how many communities it rests on.
- Per pet or per unit is often unstated. Most properties that publish pet rent do not say whether it doubles for a second dog. Where they do not say, we record the number as published.
- Read on or before 2026-08-16, from each property's own website or its management company's, and re-checked on a schedule.
- Nothing here is a quote. Ring the property. A policy can change the week after we read it.