no pets?

Apologies in advance if this belongs on the pets board - I wasn't quite sure where the best spot would be.

I've been looking online at listings for flats, and am noticing that almost all of them seem to state "no pets".  I know a lot of listings for apartments here may say that, but it can oftentimes be worked around with an extra deposit.  Is that true in the UK as well?  Not quite sure what we'd do if it weren't... we have one cat, to whom we are ridiculously attached, and I'm hoping his presence won't make the process of finding a suitable flat even more difficult than it already is! 

I've been looking online at listings for flats, and am noticing that almost all of them seem to state "no pets".  I know a lot of listings for apartments here may say that, but it can oftentimes be worked around with an extra deposit.  Is that true in the UK as well?  Not quite sure what we'd do if it weren't... we have one cat, to whom we are ridiculously attached, and I'm hoping his presence won't make the process of finding a suitable flat even more difficult than it already is! 

We found that to be true - at least in central London.  We have 2 cats and we hit some roadblocks with places that were absolutely anti-pet, but when we found a place we wanted, we offered an extra 2 weeks of deposit and it seemed to smooth out any resistance.  We rented in the US, so we also had a pet reference letter.  It was a total joke, but we got our landlords to give us a statement saying that our cats were well-behaved, whatever that means.

One estate agent told us to just not mention the cats, but I wasn't comfortable with that. 

Given the current rental market, I wouldn't mention the availability of an additional deposit at the outset. 

sometimes you can negotiate the no pets clause, yes...it just depends on the landlord/agency.  We ended up renting via a private landlord (found on Gumtree) and I found that trying to find somewhere to rent with pets was much easier with private rentals (although it certainly can be done via an agency as well!)

We didn't have any problems finding a place in west London with our two cats. I was really worried about it before we started looking. I thought they would be a hindrance in getting a place we would really like. We used estate agents to find flats, and our pets weren't ever a problem. I think there was one place that he mentioned wouldn't accept pets, but we saw fantastic places that didn't have any special clauses for pets.

Apologies in advance if this belongs on the pets board - I wasn't quite sure where the best spot would be.

I've been looking online at listings for flats, and am noticing that almost all of them seem to state "no pets".  I know a lot of listings for apartments here may say that, but it can oftentimes be worked around with an extra deposit.  Is that true in the UK as well?  Not quite sure what we'd do if it weren't... we have one cat, to whom we are ridiculously attached, and I'm hoping his presence won't make the process of finding a suitable flat even more difficult than it already is! 

Yep, a lot of rentals in our area are strictly no pets as well. Even a sort of divey place we lived in when I first moved here wouldn't let us have one fat dog who sleeps all day and does nothing wrong.