The Multifamily Innovation® Podcast
Patrick Antrim, Founder and CEO of Multifamily Leadership, Producers of the Multifamily Leadership Innovation & AI Summit, the Multifamily Women® Summit, and the Best Places to Work Multifamily® will bring you success strategies for Multifamily CEOs, executive leaders and aspiring leaders that want to drive high performance results for their portfolio.
The Multifamily Innovation® Podcast
How PetScreening Transforms Pet Policies and Boosts Profits for Multifamily Operators
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In this episode of the Multifamily Innovation® Podcast, host Patrick Antrim sits down with Arlene Mayfield, Senior Vice President at PetScreening, to explore how PetScreening is reshaping pet policies and operations across the multifamily industry. With over 7 million units under management and partnerships with more than 24,000 property management companies, PetScreening brings innovative solutions that enhance resident experiences, boost property revenue, and streamline compliance with HUD’s guidelines for emotional support animals.
Arlene emphasizes the importance of trust, communication, and collaboration as the foundation for strong partnerships. These values are essential as PetScreening helps property management companies tackle pet-related challenges and improve overall efficiency. PetScreening’s solution alleviates the burden of HUD compliance for Emotional Support Animal (ESA) requests, removing the legal complexity from property managers and reducing potential liability. Additionally, the service is cost-effective: property management companies can implement PetScreening at no cost, as fees are only charged to residents with household pets, allowing managers to avoid “junk fee” concerns.
With PetScreening, properties gain insightful access to pet demographics, such as tracking bite histories, which help properties understand and mitigate risks associated with pet ownership in their communities. PetScreening’s software can be implemented in a week, with two-way integrations into most property management software, making setup fast and effective. Their system enables properties to capture additional revenue through pet fees while also creating a reliable process to verify ESA claims and deter false documentation.
Arlene also shared PetScreening’s plans to expand into the short-term rental space, enabling pet-friendly travel accommodations and office environments where pets can help increase employee engagement and satisfaction. As she notes, “Pets are the new kids, with more pets now in households than children.” Through its offerings, PetScreening builds peace of mind, with the ESA compliance service not only lifting a legal burden but also offering properties a streamlined approach to managing pet policies.
About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.
To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.
For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.
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Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
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Innovative Solutions for Multifamily Industry
Speaker 1All right. So today we're joined by Arlene Mayfield, really excited to share the time. We've been following her success for many, many years and, as many of you already probably know, you're familiar with the brand Pet Screening and they're all across the country, in so many great states, leading so many great people to bring some of the most important things to our business that impact our profitability, our efficiency and the experiences we create. And so we're bringing our lean in and we're, you know, as we lead into the Multifamily Innovation and AI Summit. We spend time with innovative brands that are doing interesting things and creating value for organizations, and as part of the Innovation Council, we get the opportunity to learn about the problems that our multifamily owners and operators want to solve and then also the opportunities that they want to create, and so, with our partners, we get together like who's solving those things and who can best help and support our industry platform. So with that, arlene, welcome in. Glad to have you here.
Speaker 2Thank you, it's great to see you, great to connect today.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely so. Listen, you're leading one of probably the largest sales organizations in multifamily. Tell me a little bit more about that and how you guys are approaching things differently in multifamily.
Speaker 2Yeah. So I've been really fortunate since I joined Pet Screening to be able to build what I would call my dream team, having been in the industry for about 40 years, really handpicked and selected who I thought would be best to support the pet screening and partner with a pet screening product and solution that we offer. So we have about 10 national reps distributed across the country. They sell on a PMC by PMC basis. We're not based on geography, which I know a lot of sales organizations are. I basically said where do you have relationships, where do you think you can best use those relationships or partnerships with multifamily property management companies? And let's figure out how we can make those accounts beneficial to both you, to the company and, obviously, to the property management firms that want to talk to us on a daily basis. I think one of the best things about multifamily is we all love the partnerships that we've developed over the years. We like to work with people that we know and we trust, and I've given the team the ability to do that.
Speaker 1I want to get into the product in just a moment here, but what do you believe makes a great partnership?
Speaker 2You know, I think I would start off with trust, trust and confidence. Being able to trust the PMC, being able to trust the person that they're dealing with on the other side of the desk, knowing that they're going to follow through. You know the old saying under promising and over delivering. I think that goes a long way in this industry. And look, we have long memories in this industry, so doing the right thing. People will remember that and they want to work with people that have always done right by them. So I would start by saying trust and, I think, collaboration and communication. I think, as our industry has grown, and especially the advances that we've had post-pandemic, I think that we're moving very quickly and it's not just about a supplier selling something to a property management company. There's a lot of collaboration now. How can the products be better, how can the solutions provide more of what the property management companies or owner and asset managers need? And I think that collaboration, communication and trust all work very well together.
Speaker 1That's incredibly important and underestimated in so many ways. We're all trying to go fast and acquire customers and serve, but I love the under-promise, over-deliver aspect. I think it's like reasonable expectations of growth and progress establishes to your point the outcome, that trust I mean. If you can win and do the small things, you can do the big things.
Speaker 2That's right, that's great, very well said, I agree.
Speaker 1Yeah, so tell me, let's talk about the product. What are you guys working on, what's the problem it solves and who are you trying to spend time with?
Speaker 2So we know, based on a lot there's a lot of data out there on pets, right we talk about at Pet Screening pets being the new kids there are more pets typically in households today than there are children in households today, just kind of how things have flip-flopped a little bit. So, knowing that, we try to solve the potential pet problems that are on properties today. So when I think about our company, we've been around for seven years. We service 7 million units, about 24,000 property management companies across the country. Through those 7 million units we consider all of those long-term rentals. They may be rental homes, but they may also be one of the NMHC top 50. So we service everything from one unit to 900,000 unit property management companies and everything in between.
Speaker 2So our software has the ability to allow the prospective resident to define if one of three things they have a household pet, they have an assistance animal, an emotional support animal we call them ESAs or they don't have a pet.
Speaker 2And it really allows the property manager again, no matter what size of the property it is, allows that property manager to know the demographic of the pets that are on the site. They know the demographic of their resident because they have them fill out an application as they're moving in. We're basically doing the same thing as the resident is moving in. We partner with all the property management software systems, so there's two-way integrations. An email goes out within 15 minutes of the application being filled out that says hey, you're applying for an apartment. We'd love to know if you have a pet and, if so, tell us a few things about your pet. So it's seamless. It's integrated within the property management software systems as well as some other third-party systems, and we solve that pet problem because people then know which pets are on site and if they get lost, you know if they're charging pet rent and things like that. They have the ability to really determine how to do that.
Speaker 1Let's lean into. You mentioned some of the potential problems. Maybe somebody listening in isn't thinking about all the potential problems they may be making assumptions about. But how are people going about this process, I guess, if they're not a customer, what does that look like?
Speaker 2I think one of the main things that we solve for and we're known for is the ESA, or the emotional support animal, and the assistance with the documentation associated with that.
Speaker 2Since our inception about seven years ago, we have processed about 1.2 million ESA or assistant animal requests. We have a team of people in our Charlotte office that's where our corporate office is and they review about 25,000 requests on a monthly basis. If we are not reviewing those, then it's concerned that there are HUD guidelines, obviously, for the ESA requests and we do everything in accordance with those HUD guidelines. So we take that burden off the on-site or even the in-house counsel, if you will. So there's great comfort in knowing that we're doing the same thing every day. We have a very tight process on how we review those, contacting the medical providers to make sure they are accurate, and so if that's not being done by us, oftentimes you'll hear some anxiousness or some uncertainty from the person that is doing it, because they're very unsure if they're doing it correctly and they're naturally, if HUD's involved, concerned of a potential lawsuit.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I mean you're talking about counsel doing this. I mean that could be expensive. I'm just calculating the time and then the training and turnover and all that plays out into another thing to manage.
Streamlining Pet Screening and Revenue Boosting
Speaker 2Absolutely, and when you talk about the cost associated with that, I'll bring that up at this point. We don't charge the property management company and we don't have any contracts, so there's no cost associated with the property management company or the asset or the owner. We charge the resident only if they have a household pet. There is an annual one-time fee that we charge on an annual basis really keeps up their pet records, they get vaccination, updates and some things like that. But if it's an ESA request or they don't have a pet, we don't charge anything. So it makes it very cost effective for the property management company or the owner.
Speaker 1Right and it gives them some distance to not be the ones to assert certain compliance right. I mean, it gives you some space there as well, I would imagine.
Speaker 2Exactly Reviewing and giving the recommendations on the ESA request or even on a household pet. We like to think that every property is pet inclusive and pet friendly, but we know that sometimes there are weight or breed restrictions, so we will unquote, sniff all of those out for our clients as well, to make sure that you know what we are processing for them and giving them recommendations for, so they can make an educated decision, are within their guidelines.
Speaker 1So where are you seeing things going? Are there any trends that multifamily owners and operators should be paying attention to? You mentioned the one around the amount of pets in homes, this type of stuff. Are there any other insights that you're learning from this type of reach?
Speaker 2I think that a couple of things. I think the average speaking of the homes and pets, the average property manager will say yeah, we have about 25% of our property having pets. We know that the average household has about 70%. We know about 50% of those are in rentals give or take. You know, more in single family, more in build to rent than there may be in a high rise in downtown Chicago. So that varies greatly. We're seeing.
Speaker 2You know, one of the things that we do as well is we track bite and bite history of pets and so you know we try to track those trends as if there's more pets and in some areas or you know, as far as pet bites and things like that than other areas. So we try to track some trends like that and be able to give some of that information back to our clients and our customers. We know that pet bites seem to be on the rise again because there are more pets, we think in a confined space. So we want to make sure we're helping our clients with the liability and they're aware of what that could look like.
Speaker 1I mean being in 7 million units is a great accomplishment. Tell me what that process looks like in terms of onboarding and getting set up with your organization, because some people listening may not already be one of the 7 million, but I'd be curious to see what would they expect to experience when they reach out to you and want to become part of your program.
Speaker 2Yes, it's very seamless and it can happen very quickly. I think when you talk about a software, when you talk about a new software, a lot of clients or a lot of people would say, okay, this is going to be a very laborious process, this is going to take months of my time and it's going to take time for the onsite teams. We really say that we can set any client up within seven days. So basically, as I mentioned, if somebody signs up for pet screening, in conjunction with the application being filled out, the resident is filling out the information about their pets. But prior to that and signing up for pet screening, basically a property signs up. We have, as I mentioned, integrations with all the property management software companies. They take a training course in LMS that takes about 45 minutes, has a few questions for the onsite team to answer, as they're taking that automated LMS and within a seven-day period they can be live on their property. That means live on their property, us handling all of their ESAs. For them, that also means live on their property, them getting pet revenue that they may have not been able to get before.
Speaker 2One of the things that we really pride ourselves in is providing our clients with reporting to show if someone has started filling out one of the three profiles that being of the pet owner, of the ESA or the no pet and maybe they haven't finished filling out the profile. We know chances are they probably have a pet and they just didn't finish filling it out because we asked them to sign an affidavit at the end of every profile saying that it's true and correct. So the honest people out there tend to not finish filling it out. So we can provide some pivot reporting to where the onsite managers can go in and get some ancillary revenue. They're not currently getting but within that seven-day period they're set up, they're ready to go and again they enjoy that additional pet revenue.
Speaker 2They enjoy us handling those ESA requests for them. In addition, they know who doesn't have a pet. There's opportunities, you know sometimes around the holidays people are giving pets, puppies for Christmas. There's an opportunity when somebody has signed that they haven't had a pet. We remind them that if they do get a pet they need to let the office know or their property manager know. So there's opportunities throughout the process to get additional pet revenue and pet fees, boosting that ancillary revenue. And when occupancies or rents are going down as they currently are and have been for the past 12 to 18 months. It's really enticing for the owners and the operators to get that additional revenue.
Speaker 1Yes, exactly, and take me inside some of those conversations. What kind of questions are they asking you about those opportunities and how to execute on them?
Speaker 2Oftentimes we get questions regarding the $30 household pet fee. That seems to, over the last, I would say, four or five months, we've had a lot of questions about that. There's a lot of noise right now around the junk fees, right, and I think that we're hearing okay. Is $30 deemed part of the junk fees? Definitely not. It's $30. It's once a year. It's a service we're providing for the resident and knowing that you know people spend billions on their pets every year, $30, you know, is really not a lot.
Speaker 2We get a lot of questions about the ancillary revenue. What other companies may be charging for pet fees and pet deposits? Do people have breed restrictions? Are they abiding by the weight restrictions? Some companies that use pet screening have actually taken away all the breed and the weight restrictions because they do have a good idea of the profile or the demographic of those pets and they feel like at least they know. And if they know who's on site with what pet, it helps with the false ESA requests.
Enhancing Pet Screening for Multifamily
Speaker 2Oftentimes people might say that they have a restricted breed, an emotional support animal. So in using pet screening sometimes it takes away some of those barriers and the prospective resident or the actual resident feels more comfortable saying that they do have a restricted breed but if the property allows that breed, there's not as many false ESA requests. So a lot of our conversations are around the ESA request process, the $30 fee associated with the household pet and the integration piece. Everyone wants to know if they use that property management software system, how seamless is that integration? And when we have two-way integrations with the PMS systems, it's easy for them to look in their system that the onsite managers are in every day, all day, to be able to see the actual profile. So it's very helpful.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's great. Take me through a little bit about what you're hearing from current customers. What are they saying? How is this making life better for the business, either financially or even from an experience standpoint? What are you hearing?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think we hear three things mainly. Number one thank you for handling the ESA requests. We know that dealing with HUD is sometimes tricky and they feel that we've lifted that burden off for them. So they have comfort in knowing that they appreciate that we are helping that onsite team, the onsite teams even if the onsite team has not handled the ESA request, they are accepting or denying people that are coming in with pets on a daily basis. They appreciate that we're taking that burden off of the onsite teams or, if it's centralized, someone potentially at the corporate office, by giving a recommendation. And that's exactly what we give.
Speaker 2If there is a weight or breed restriction and we dump those into our algorithm and let the onsite team or whoever's deemed the responsible party know that resident that will be moving in may not fit within those guidelines. Based on what we call a FIDO score, like a FICA score, we give each pet a FIDO score. So if there are breed and weight restrictions, we may give someone with a German Shepherd if that is a restriction a zero PAW score. So we may make a recommendation that the pet has a zero PAW score. They can still say they want to allow them to move in. We're just giving them the information.
Speaker 2Sometimes the property's in lease up and they're just happy to have somebody come to the door. They have great credit. They just need to know what pet is actually there, so they feel good knowing that. The third thing is knowing that they don't have a pet, and we actually have residents that are happy when properties use pet screening because they know that there is a process associated on site with managing the pets. So it's interesting that, since we serve 7 million units now that the prospective residents are even in tune to what we do at pet screening.
Speaker 1Yeah, Are you hearing? Even in the sales process for renting is that being positioned as a value? You know, knowing, like even you're going into the bite records and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2Most definitely. Prospects want to know and clients want to know what's happening with these pets. So that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 1Yeah, interesting. What are the questions I should be asking that maybe I'm not asking in evaluating a company like yours?
Speaker 2I think that I always think that we're the best kept secret, and when I joined the company, I heard that from our founder and our owner that we're the best kept secret and people don't know who we are. I think that even a concept of knowing that there is a property management tool out there that allows people to track pets is something that most people don't know about. So when you ask, you know what questions should I be asking? I think you covered a lot of what we talk about with prospective clients or existing clients. I think that you've covered most of those.
Speaker 1Are you excited about anything next? Are you guys looking at other adjacent opportunities? I mean, I'm sure you're in these conversations Sounds like you've created some great relationships adding a lot of value. Is there anything exciting on the agenda for what's next for the brand?
Speaker 2Yeah. So while our founder developed this company as a property manager serving property managers and that's really what we're about, as you can imagine there has been a lot of interest from other companies. Ceos are potentially trying to get people back into offices. So we've had some large office companies say, hey, can we use pet screening? Because maybe if we allow pets to come into the office, people will want to come to work a little bit more. I'm in our corporate office in Charlotte today, even though I'm based in Atlanta, and at any given day there's 20 to 30 pets in our office and so people usually dogs, people bring them in. So I think CEOs are looking at that.
Speaker 2We're in the process right now of developing a short-term rental product. So basically, people want to take their pets on vacation Oftentimes the hotels, or even if you're going to a condo or you know somewhere on vacation, you can't bring your pets. So we're looking at developing a short-term rental, vacation rental product, very similar to what we do with long-term rentals, to allow people to bring their pets. If you're going to an Airbnb, you know you pay a deposit, but you can at least have your pet stay with you for the next week to a month, if you want to, and then there's other verticals that we will branch out into as well. We've had some interest from many different companies in different verticals, so I think those will come, you know, within the next 12 to 18 to 24 months as we continue to build out pet screening.
Speaker 1I love that. Thanks for sharing that. You know, I think about like just the whole idea of the business that we serve multifamily, you know, there's always been this American dream to own a home and I think that's all being reimagined in terms of access being the new ownership right Like you can go into a city and even in the way that people work they're not working 25 years for Intel, you know, in Albuquerque and things like that and so if they're moving around, it makes sense to have an understanding of the travel impact and even in the short-term experience, you know, because I think a lot of that's coming into the industry as well. But I'm just curious, like in airline travel, I don't travel with my pets on the airlines and all that. What's that process look like? I guess? Have you guys thought through that? Or is that mostly ESA governance versus just frequent pet traveling?
Speaker 2There is no governance. So we have talked about it and we have looked at it because you know, I think we've all been on flights and people take their dogs, usually out of their little carriers, and you're wondering is this dog going to bite me? You know like I was on a plane recently and the dog was walking up and down, you know the aisle and it was probably an 80 or 90 pound dog. You think to yourself, right, or even when you get nowhere to go.
Speaker 1Right, You're at a hotel.
Speaker 2Am I getting in with a dog that is vaccinated? Do they have a bite history and things like that. So I think that, as we think about pet screening and we think about you know 2.0 and then versions past that, taking the learnings that we have in multifamily and that we've developed over the 7 million units that we have, and you can imagine the rich data that we have supporting and behind that, I think you know thinking about the airlines and you know what we could potentially provide for them and you know the airlines, I think, have an interest because right now they just charge a fee and I have a sister that works at Delta. She's on the executive team and she said we charge a fee but we have no idea about that pet. Is it vaccinated, is it spayed or neutered? Does it have a bite history? How old is it?
Speaker 2So all of those questions that we ask residents today, I think the airlines are becoming a little more wise as they've experienced, unfortunately, some liability issues. So I think it's a great question and it's a great thought and we've talked about it a lot here. As you can imagine, with any company, even though we're in strong growth mode, because we're past the startup mode how do you scale? Where do you go first and how do you scale and that's a lot of the conversations that we have when do we go next? And that's why we picked vacation rentals, because we think that that is the next natural step.
Speaker 1And then what will be next on the horizon as we move forward. Yeah, I mean, spaces are spaces in many different places, like you have office right, libraries, you have restaurants, all these different things going on, and our residents experience all these things as much as anything else. But I was just curious. That's interesting. You know how you guys approach this stuff Very innovative, very visionary and just really enjoying the partnership too, because you know we aim to bring together top minds and multifamily, bringing in technology, innovation and, you know, making the business better for companies but also increasing the value of the relationship of all of our clients when they introduce residents to their portfolios, making life and renting a better experience. So thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 1I appreciate it very much, yeah absolutely, and so we're about ready to wrap. I'd love to leave you with. Are there any final thoughts that you want to leave our listeners with before?
Speaker 2we wrap up and offer a solution that can save them money, provide additional ancillary revenue, reduce liabilities and take care of their ESA requests. So I would love to talk to anybody about that and just look forward to continuing to learn from clients so we can continue to develop.
Speaker 1Amazing. I love it. Build with them. So I love what you're doing, love what you're working on, and we all love pets, so at least here we do, so yeah pets are the new kids, as we say. As I said earlier, All right, well, thanks for coming on and for that we'll put all the notes in the show notes so you can reach out to the teams, and we'll see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 2Thanks so much. Have a great day you too.
