Families researching a move with an animal spend most of their effort on whether the building allows it and almost none on how the animal will take it. Belmar Oakland, listed at $5,500 a month, is the Troy address that welcomes pets, and once the policy question is settled the practical one is what the first fortnight looks like for a cat that has lived in the same house for eleven years.
Animals read a move about as well as people do, which is to say badly at first and then reasonably well. Knowing what that looks like keeps a family from concluding in week one that the whole thing was a mistake.
The Settling Period
Cats generally deal with the upheaval of it by disappearing. A cat in a new apartment will find the smallest dark space available, stay in it for anywhere from a day to a week, and come out at night before it comes out in daylight. The response that works is to leave it alone, keep the litter tray and the food in fixed positions from the first hour, and resist the urge to pull it out from under the bed to prove it is fine.
Dogs generally do the opposite of that and become loud. An unfamiliar corridor with unfamiliar people passing at unpredictable hours produces barking from a dog that never barked at home, and in a shared building that is a genuine problem in a way it never was in a house. It usually settles within a fortnight, and it settles considerably faster where the walk happens at the same times every day and where the dog is not left alone for long stretches in the first week.
The practical preparation for either species is much the same. Bring the animal's own bedding rather than buying new, keep the feeding schedule exactly as it was, and where the building allows it, bring the animal to visit before moving day rather than making the first visit permanent.
The Neighbors Nobody Thinks About
A house has no neighbors in the relevant sense. A shared building has plenty, and they divide roughly into people who are delighted by an animal in the corridor and people who are frightened of one, which is why buildings write rules about where animals may go, how they travel in a lift, and what happens in a dining room. None of that reflects any hostility toward pets; it is the ordinary business of running a building where two hundred preferences have to coexist.
For a family it is worth asking what those rules are before rather than after, because they shape the daily routine. Whether a dog may be carried through the main lobby or has to use a side door, whether animals are permitted in communal lounges, and how waste is handled on the grounds all sound trivial and become significant when repeated twice a day for three years.
What It Costs and What the County Wants
Charges arrive in two parts: something taken once at the beginning and something added to each month's bill per animal, with the refundability of the first depending on the building's own terms rather than any standard. Dogs additionally need a current Michigan license, issued around here by Oakland County against an up-to-date rabies record, and a community will expect to see both before an animal arrives. Cats need no such license, though their vaccination record is still asked for.
Limits on size and breed sit alongside that, generally inherited from what a building's insurance will underwrite rather than chosen by the building, which is why they rarely move for an individual animal however well behaved it is.
Confirming the Troy Terms Before Moving Day
Worth pinning down: what the size and breed rules currently say, how many animals are permitted, what is charged at the start and monthly, which parts of the building an animal may enter, whether a visit before moving day is possible, and who is named as backup if the resident cannot manage. An advisor covering Oakland County can confirm all of it against the specific animal.
If the cat or the dog is what a Troy move hinges on, talk it through and both the rules and the practicalities can be sorted out before moving day.
We keep expanding our Troy coverage as we evaluate providers for quality and alignment in 2026. Start the conversation about pet friendly in Troy, or scan the buildings we cover at your own pace.
