Freehold and Leasehold
Before you begin accepting pets in your property, it's important that you check your title deeds. Even though you own your property, there may be certain stipulations in the deeds which would prevent you from giving permission for tenants to kept pets.
If you own a freehold property, there may be restrictive covenants prohibiting animals from being kept at the property. However, such covenants are increasingly uncommon and often relate only to farm animals.
If you own a leasehold property, it is important to study the terms of your lease to see whether there are any restrictions which would prevent you from accepting tenants with pets. If there are no such restrictions, you would normally be entitled as a private landlord to allow tenants to keep pets at your discretion.
If your lease does restrict or prohibit the keeping of pets, you may wish to approach the freeholder to see whether they would be willing to change the terms of your lease. However, if your property is in a block of flats the freeholder would need the consent of all the leaseholders as their leases would also need to be changed.
If you own a share of the freehold and all the other freeholders are in agreement, you can change the lease to allow pets. You would need to contact a solicitor to do this for you.