There are many benefits to multifamily communities being pet-friendly, including happier residents, an improved reputation and more homes available for pets that don’t have one. But the residual effects don’t stop there. Another major benefit is that it widens the pool of prospective residents.
Apartment communities across the nation are making concerted efforts to strengthen their pet-friendliness, which is both uplifting and necessary.
Residents consider pets to be part of their families, and the pandemic-fueled adoption boom has added even more pets to the rental-housing landscape.
When non-pet owners were asked what their top three pet-related concerns are, it wasn’t fear, aggression or biting that topped the list. It was nuisance issues such as pet waste, excessive barking and unleashed dogs that perturb them the most.
While 76% of operators identify their property as being pet-friendly, a staggering 72% of renters say that pet-friendly housing is hard to find. As these numbers seem to contradict one another, finding the cause of this disconnect is crucial to creating a community that is pet-inclusive.
This week’s top multifamily storylines include ways to make housing more affordable, product knowledge in leasing, addressing the package management burden, construction delays continue, questioning the suburban push and caring for pet-owning residents.
Inside this issue of the multifamily Industry Trends Report: making business intelligence intelligent, mixed response to Texas lifting mask mandate, residents citing pets as the reason they had to move, NMHC’s expanded commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, the merger of RPM and CF Real Estate Services and single-family rental values.
According to the Multifamily Pet Policies and Amenities Survey recently released by PetScreening and J Turner Research, 26% of pet-owning respondents indicated they acquired their pet during the pandemic. The rate climbs to 39% when narrowing down to student-only respondents.
Data from the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative reveals nearly one in four apartment residents say their pet has been a reason for needing to move. The 24% figure translates to approximately 5.5 million renting households that have been displaced or voluntarily sought a new home as a result of their pet.
The recently unveiled Multifamily Pet Policies and Amenities survey, conducted by PetScreening and J Turner Research and featuring the feedback of nearly 23,000 apartment residents, found that non-pet-owning residents are reasonably agreeable with a community’s pet population.
For decades, pet policies were something of a cookie-cutter concept at apartment communities: Only certain breeds, only certain sizes and a limit of one or two pets per household. Those standard policies, have become antiquated as pet owners constitute one of the fastest growing segments in rental housing.