Smarter pet management keeps renters, protects income with pet-friendly policies and becomes a part of operational strategy in multifamily.
By Kevin Jacobson
Among today’s renter households, pets aren’t optional. According to Zillow’s recent Consumer Housing Trends Report, renters are now more likely to have at least one pet (59%) than a child (37%). This shift is reshaping leasing decisions, with as many as 60% of renters renewing their leases because their property allows pets.
Yet, despite high demand for pet-friendly homes, most renters still can’t find them. Research from the Pet & Housing Initiative at Michelson Found Animals reveals that 72% of renters struggle to find homes that accommodate pets, and 59% say it’s unaffordable, even as 76% of providers identify their properties as pet-friendly.
In reality, pet-friendly policies are easier to advertise than to implement. Pets introduce real complexity for multifamily operators, requiring discipline to avoid liability or property damage and to maintain policy enforcement and fee management across a portfolio.
At the same time, this complexity presents an opportunity.
Operators who treat pet management as an operational strategy and build technology-enabled systems for pet screening, documentation, compliance and revenue capture will be well-positioned to improve retention, protect net operating income (NOI) and outperform in a challenging market.
The Business Case for Strategic Pet Management
Last year, rental vacancies rose to 7.6% nationwide, up from 7.2% the prior year. As major cities build more apartments and supply grows, operators face mounting pressure to attract new residents and retain existing ones.
If, as Zillow found, nearly 60% of renters have pets, restrictive policies or pet-free communities significantly narrow the prospect pool to less than half of available demand. To put it plainly, in a high-vacancy market, shutting out the pet-owning renter population is a losing strategy.
Most operators already recognize the value of pet-friendly policies in strengthening occupancy and retention. As reported in Foxen’s Multifamily Pet Management Trends Report, 82% of property management professionals say allowing pets helps fill vacancies faster, and 93% permit pets in at least some of their units. For the nearly 90% of operators who charge monthly pet rent, the revenue foundation is already in place.
The opportunity now is to move beyond simply allowing pets to managing them strategically. Yet in many portfolios, the systems behind the policies remain fragmented or informal, and those gaps limit revenue, increase risk and undermine the intended benefits.
3 Problems Undermining Pet-Friendly Policies
Across large, multi-property portfolios, three recurring issues prevent pet-friendly policies from delivering their full value.
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Emotional-support-animal fraud and misrepresentation
A majority of operators worry that residents misrepresent pets as emotional support animals (ESAs) to avoid fees or restrictions — and the concern is well-founded. Foxen’s data notes that over half (53%) say ESA misrepresentation and fraud have grown more common in their communities. A different study found that 14% of surveyed dog owners admitted they registered their dog as an ESA to avoid paying pet fees entirely. When ESA accommodations are handled inconsistently across properties, operators face legal exposure that can turn accommodations into operational vulnerabilities.
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Liability and unreported pets
Pets often go unreported or aren’t properly documented, opening the door to potential liability and safety risks. Nearly half of property professionals say renters hiding pets has become more common over the past five years. In response, some communities restrict too much, while others remain too lax. But both approaches create exposure — and without a consistent, documented process applied portfolio-wide, operators lack protection in either direction.
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Inconsistent breed and size restrictions
Many communities rely on inherited pet policies with unclear origins. Instead of tying restrictions to specific documented instances, operators broadly apply caps on the number of animals per unit, breed exclusions and weight limits.
Operators believe these restrictions to be protective, but only a quarter of these communities collect bite history, and just one in three ask about behavioral concerns. Without behavior-based data, blanket restrictions become blunt instruments and limit residents without accurately defining or managing actual risk.
What a Disciplined Pet Management System Looks Like
With a more disciplined pet-management approach, operators can address these problems and shift toward a system that both generates revenue and improves resident retention.
Here’s how:
Communicate early. When evaluating which lease to sign, renters with pets want clarity: What’s required? What will it cost? And what choices do they have to make before they commit?
Operators can avoid potential friction or complaints in their pet-management processes by communicating requirements and fees as early in the leasing process as possible, in plain language. Residents who understand what they’ve agreed to rarely push back. Those who feel surprised by fees or restrictions often do.
Treat pet management as a revenue-and-risk line. Pet revenue and pet risk belong on the same ledger. Operators should approach pet management with the same financial discipline applied to other NOI drivers: tracking what’s been collected against what should be collected, identifying where fees are slipping through and understanding liability exposure created by unreported animals. An uninsured incident involving an unreported animal can put an operator on the hook for a loss with no policy to absorb it, so the documentation trail required to defend against it has to be built before the loss occurs, not after.
Standardize the process across the entire portfolio. Inconsistency is where pet management breaks down. One site granting exceptions that others don’t, leasing staff applying documentation requirements differently across a portfolio, ESA requests handled on instinct rather than process — each of these creates legal exposure and harms the integrity of the entire system.
Across a multi-state portfolio with hundreds of units, technology makes good policy scalable. Pet-management technology creates a centralized, consistent process that doesn’t depend on individual judgment calls, helping operators collect and manage documentation, store animal records and ensure the same requirements across a larger portfolio. These tools also help operators collect and manage individual pet data to make defensible decisions, broadening the pool of qualified residents and reducing the number of blanket restrictions.
It’s Time to Deliver a Truly Pet-Friendly Solution
Marketing properties as pet-friendly is no longer enough to compete. With fee regulations tightening, ESA litigation evolving and resident expectations for transparency rising, the margin for loose, informal pet management will only narrow.
As more renters prioritize their pets when evaluating leasing commitments, the operators who outperform in the next few years won’t just allow pets on their properties; they will have built systems to deliver a truly pet-friendly solution.
About the author:
Kevin Jacobson is CEO of Foxen, a financial technology company that provides AI-managed renters insurance compliance and other services to increase revenue and reduce risk. He previously held leadership roles at high-growth software-delivery businesses, including as COO of LogicGate and as CFO at Kapow. Kevin earned his BS in Finance from Miami University.
