You May Have More Pets Than People…What Are You Doing About That?
By Victoria Cowart, CPM, NAAEI Faculty
In 2023, there were approximately 45 million housing units occupied by renters. That equated to 34% of US households. One driver of demand for rental housing is the cost savings and the gap between wages and home ownership.
Across 50 of the largest metro areas, renting is 37% less expensive than buying a typical home. Add to that, in many of these metros, the “median household income is insufficient to qualify for the median-priced home,” and what renters need in terms of a down payment, and you have renters who are not “climbing the property ladder.”
Despite the challenges facing renters in climbing that housing ladder, rent growth was under 1 percent in Q3 of 2023, across a spectrum of rental types, and vacancies rose 1 percent. These statistics are in light of an addition of 91K new renter households in this same quarter.
For management, this means renters, once earned, are precious and must be well served so that property management pros can retain them during their climb, remembering there are nearly $485 billion dollars spent on rent each year. How can the industry appeal to these renters, attract and retain them? What matters most to them?
One thing that 70% of households LOVE is their pets! Pets are indeed the new kids; welcoming them is a key component in marketing, achieving, and maintaining happy renters. That said, managing this additional population of furry renters can be difficult.
There’s data—there’s always data. Who and what lives in your rentals is a crucial data set. What do you have, and what reporting can you achieve in this space? What are your risks, and what are you doing to uncover and control them? And what about the all-important cost offsets and income from this population of furry renters? Property management professionals have ongoing costs here. How are they being recovered?
The first and best-in-class pawtner in these arenas is PetScreening. PetScreening’s services, which are free to PetScreening’s property management clients, allow companies to set and manage their pet policies, manage pet risk, obtain pet data for budgets and other decision-making, and scale pet-related income.
First, each company should examine its policies. The way to most renter hearts is through their furry family. Those 70% of households, equates to 90 million homes owning pets, and 97% of those owners consider their pets to be family! Setting policies that welcome them is critically important. Each company should consider the most popular pets, and be intentional in setting their breed and weight restrictions. Here are some facts to consider:
- Seven of the top 32 most popular breeds are often restricted.
- The average weight of the top 25 most popular breeds is 36 pounds.
- Ten of the top 25 weigh more than that, coming in at 59 pounds.
After examining and setting policies, companies can use PetScreening to manage the pet policies across a given portfolio with PetScreening’s “landing pages” and proprietary algorithmic FIDO Scoring. Each household will declare their pet and assistance animal status, and each pet will receive FIDO scoring. This process will provide true insight and consistent pet policy management.
However, the work of property management professionals continues. After the no-pet households and those with pets are managed, every company needs to have a process for addressing reasonable accommodation requests for assistance animals from those with disabilities. This process should be interactive, individualized, and based on a good-faith dialogue. And yet again, PetScreening is the partner of choice for more than 7 million rentals of all shapes and sizes across the country.
PetScreening has an assistance animal team of reviewers, authenticators, and attorneys, and they are serving the industry in this area, taking this work off their clients’ paws in seven million rentals! The reviewers take that initial look at service animal requests (two questions/two answers per HUD) and the required documentation for support animals. If the request is complete and HUD compliant, an authenticator will confirm with the provider of the support animal documentation that they drafted it for that particular requestor on the date in the documentation. This process gives PetScreening’s clients valuable confirmation of the authenticity of the documentation. Together, the reviewers and authenticators at PetScreening, guided by the PetScreening legal team, work to bring each request to the point of determining whether or not it can be recommended to their clients for admittance as an assistance animal.
With all of that work being provided, it’s again noteworthy to share that these services are free to PetScreening’s clientele. The only charge they pass along for the services is a nominal initial/annual fee for pet profiles, which the pet owner pays directly to PetScreening, making the process simple and seamless for the housing providers.
With Generation Z topping out at 27 years old and Millennials topping out at 43, they make up 72% of today’s renters, and they own nearly half of the pets in the country. They want a variety of pets, spoil their pets, and likely spend half of the almost $186 billion a year our country spends on pets! The industry should welcome them, pamper them, and offer healthier and better-managed pet environments for these furry children and their vitally essential pet parents. Let PetScreening be your pawtner with simple onboarding, integrated technology, and no costs. Learn more at PetScreening.com.
Victoria Cowart, CPM, NAAEI Faculty, and the Director Education & Outreach for PetScreening. For more information, please visit PetScreening.com.
