How long does pet odor stay in a house?

[Anonymous]

Urine that hasn’t been cleaned up promptly and properly is going to stay until you seal it or paint it.

I agree with PP about fabrics but I think paint can also hold smells and any hard surface below snout level should be wiped with a rag and a general cleaner. I would ask for the place to be painted. You also want to be sure to clean above doors and cabinets, etc. Anywhere dust can settle.

I love our dog so much but pet smells are real and you really do have to clean a ton, have no carpet, and regularly have rugs washed and drapery cleaned and wash upholstery to not have smell. A good test for me is to take a big whiff when I’ve been away for several days. If I can’t smell the dog at that point most visitors will be safe.

[Anonymous]

It will go away in all carpet is replaced and the HVAC and ducts professionally cleaned out.

Inwould not rent this home.

[Anonymous]

I bought a house where the upstairs reeked of cat urine. It was sickening. I immediately ripped out the carpet and padding. Luckily no stains on the sub floors. After replacing the carpet with hardwood the smell was 100% gone.
I would not rent unless owner commits to fixing the issue before move in.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of the smartest people alive so please pay attention; if it is female dog urine it will take some soap and water and heat. What I mean by heat is the warmer it becomes in the house the faster the smell will be drawn out. If you air condition your home, forget it...open the windows and deal with the heat one summer. And of course, like I mentioned; soap & water. If it is a male dog it will simply dissipate after a couple of months. I will help if you apply baking soda and vinegar to the affected area. If it's a cat, nothing will take out the smell. There is a chemical in cat urine that molecularly attaches itself to whatever is around it and actually grows over time. This growing process can have the odor last for years and years until it finally reverses it's process and begins to break down. You will have to remove the carpets and sand the wood floors in order to remove cat odor. When I see landlords advertise such things as "cats allowed" but not dogs I can't imagine what world they're living in. Yes, a dog barks but that can easily be remedied if the owner takes care of their pet. Oh, and I just found out from my daughter that I am, in fact, NOT one of the smartest people alive, I just smell good. Okay, well, there is that.

[Anonymous]

It depends on whether it's just the smell of the pets generally or if they've been letting them urinate in the house.

If the former, it should be gone when they move and you replace the carpet with a good house cleaning (including wiping down walls, doors, trim, and places like above cabinets.

If it's a hoarding or just bad pet ownership situation with pee soaking into the floor it will be a lot harder.

[Anonymous]

I bought a house, where the previous owner let the huge dog live in the garage. It took me several scrubbings of bleach and odor remover on the walls and floor of that garage to make it not smell like dog. They had let the dog use the bathroom in the garage, so bad that the pee and feces was hard as rock and absorbed into the floor of my garage. It smelled horrendous. I was able to get probably 95% of the odor out with a whole lot of elbow grease.

Four years later, if the weather is hot and humid enough, we still sometimes get a whiff. I don’t think the dog odor will ever be entirely gone unless we repaint and reseal the garage floor and walls.

[Anonymous]

Are you smelling urine or are you smelling doggy/general pet smell? Those are totally different situations. General pet smell will go away once the pets leave and things are cleaned, but if you have an issue with pet urine (especially cat urine!!!), that's a whole 'nother story. Nothing will help urine except ripping out all of the impacted area.

We had a cat that went rogue and used a closet as a litter box. There was nothing to be done for that than to rip all of the flooring/drywall out of the area. Seriously, we cleaned the area and shut off the room for over a year - it still smelled like urine. Awful. The room wasn't usable until we replaced all of the impacted area.

Now we have a large retriever that we allow on the furniture. To be honest, sometimes our house does smell a bit 'doggy', but it goes away after I wet-vac the furniture and the area rug (hardwood underneath.). We sold our house and I asked our realtor to give us an honest opinion re: smells, and she said that we were ok. (I trust that she would have told us if otherwise, since it was in her best interest.)