Pets, Policies, and Fair Housing: What Landlords Need to Know

Pets are part of the rental equation, whether landlords like it or not. In this episode, hosts Zach and Patrick sit down with Victoria Cowart, VP of Education at PetScreening, to break down what landlords actually need to know about pets, assistance animals, and fair housing compliance.

Victoria shares her path into property management and why education is the foundation of smart rental decisions. The conversation covers the real impact pets have on rentals, common mistakes landlords make with pet policies, and the critical differences between pets and assistance animals. If you’re navigating pet ownership in your rentals (or trying to avoid legal headaches), this episode delivers practical, landlord-friendly guidance you can use right away.

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Transcript

0:32

Welcome to the Rentish podcast. I'm Zach here with my cohost, Patrick. We're two hosts on a mission to learn real estate investing. On this podcast, we'll share what we were discovering about property management, wild stories, and the lessons we pick up along the way. And that's the fun part. We're learning as we go, just like you. We bring in experts to guide us, break down the tricky stuff and figure it all out together. Let's laugh, learn and dive into real estate. Patrick, holy moly, the producers changed the script on us literally at the last minute. had no, are we looking at new season? Is that, I mean all blurs together. We'd have to have them tell us, but we can't have them tell us because right now our producer is clearly in some sort of busy kitchen from The Bear, season five, and he's not gonna be able to speak on his microphone. We say just no, we love and appreciate you, buddy. No, it's gonna be a fun episode. It's been a minute since we recorded. Well, it's gonna be a good episode. It's gonna be really fun and we're gonna get educated today for sure because we're doing another interview segment. We're bringing on someone very, very special to hang out with us on the show today. We're joined by Victoria Cowart, CPM and NAAEI faculty member. She's the Senior Director of Education and Enterprise Sales at Pet Screening where she leads educational sessions for companies and associations across the country. She's also served the industry at the local, state and national levels. Most recently as National Apartment Association, Region Vice President, 2021 Legislative Committee Chair and Certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor. What a resume. Victoria, thank you for coming onto the show. Well, thank you guys for having me. I love the learn and laugh methodology here. You know, I think you got to laugh all the time. me. That's awesome. Yeah, that's good. Well, hopefully you're in for a little bit of laughter because Patrick and I were, we are rookies. We're real estate rookies. We tell everybody that comes on the show. It's kind of like the whole premise of the podcast from, from its inception was basically like two guys that don't know much about real estate are going to learn about real estate. We're both, we're both renters. We've never owned property. So we have all tons of folks come in and kind of just talk to us and teach us a lot of different things about the industry. And it's, it's been an informative ride to say the least. think we've learned quite a few things over our time. I love that and I'm going to be watching some of your podcasts and learning from some of your other guests. I think every day is an opportunity to learn something new. And you know, and if you're here attending a session, the good thing about this is there's two ways you learn, think really failure and attending a learning opportunity like this, a session or a course of some kind. If you're not doing one of those two things, you're probably not learning. And this is way less painful than the other option which is fail. We like to think we're the Flintstones gummies of pain. It's kind of like, you you get your vitamins, but it's pretty much enjoyable the entire way through. It's not like you're getting a shot at the doctor's office or anything like that, No. uh of Flintstones, watching them move the cars. yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Well, I would love to hear a little bit about your story. We have some questions about what it is you do. We want to know about pet screening, obviously. But kind of give us an introduction for who you are as a person. Like what was your journey to get into real estate and pet screening and property management? All this stuff that we're kind of doing with Rentish being like property management, real estate, obviously pet screening has a huge part to play in all of that. So. Kind of, we'd love to hear about your story, what makes you tick. Well, 1.0 me was an operator and I got there because first of all, I have to I'm a unicorn. Most people in property management. accidentally fall into property management, right? When you decide to become an investor or an owner, that's a decision, not accidental, right? But many folks get into property management accidentally. Somebody says, you're living here, you're working part-time, do you want a full-time job? And all of a sudden they're working at the property they live on. I was a young person living in a particular neighborhood, had become acquainted with two of the maintenance guys on a neighboring property, and they talked about their jobs, seemed to like their job, and I started thinking about property management. I'm like, well, this sounds like a cool gig. So I'm 18 years old. They said, well, here's the name of the owner of the property. So I called them. said, do have any openings? He said, no. I said, well, I understand you have four properties. He said, yeah. I said, you have four property managers. I understand that's what they're called. He said, yeah. I said, well, who helps them? He said, what do you mean helps them? I said, well, they take a day off. Your properties, I'm told are open six days a week. What happens when they take a day off? Well, nothing really. I said, so their work just piles up and nobody's there to really be helpful to the customers. Like I could do that. Like don't you need somebody to work in each of your four offices as each of your four managers takes a day off. And then maybe your biggest property, I go help them an extra day a week. Like, doesn't that sound like that might make sense for your company? So I talked to him about a job and then asked him to give me the job. He said, come interview. And I still love this man to this day. He said, I'll talk to you. Let's just talk. And I said, okay. He gave me the keys to the model. He said, go look at the model, come back and sell it to me. I said, okay. I went to the model, I'm 18. I come back, I sell it to him. He said, okay, I'm creating the job and I'm giving it to you. What just happened here? I said, you sir, we're sold and I'm going to rent your apartments that same way. And he said, good. And so that's how I got into the business. I worked for that company for four and a half years after I got married a few years later, went to work for another company. I was 22 taking on 256 units and a staff of 10, including myself. I don't know what they were thinking or drinking. That was a crazy ride. The manager before me had gotten her spleen damaged by the renters there because they were a raucous bunch of people. But it was a great ride with that company. Spent a few years with them. Then went on to two other companies as an operator. I worked for four different companies over a span of 35 years. and my last portfolio was apartment communities, mobile home communities, and HOAs. Well, I'm curious about your background in multifamily and education. mean, obviously, those are two huge parts of where you've come from. Yeah. Yeah, so the, had a great friend and most of my friends in the business who know me really closely will call me if they have legal questions. I'm their non-lawyer lawyer friend and just got to play one in court a couple of hundred times as an operator here in South Carolina. That's not unlicensed practice of law. It's something you can do in property management. And so I dug into that and always loved that and was always pretty good at that element of my job, understanding all the legislation that impacts us, how to walk and talk in court and people would call me. And so I have an attorney friend who I absolutely adore and her name is Judy and she called me one day and said come help me teach at the Association of Realtors So I taught for nine years at night About 12 times a year I would teach from 6 o'clock at night till 10 o'clock at night At the end of my workday at the end of the workday of all the people in the room So we're all pounding the Starbucks triple shot latte And we're making it through and you have to really learn how to engage a group and keep things simple Because I have to pass the test if you're not helping them pass the test. You're not gonna keep the and you're not gonna get to have that kind of fun. And I really realized it was fun. So I did that for about nine years. Now I'm here at Pet Screening 2.0 Me, came over to the supplier side and called the owner of the company. This is gonna sound familiar and said, hey, this is what I do. Do you need somebody who does what I do? Do you have a job for somebody like that? Sounding familiar? Yeah. Sure, yeah. So John Bradford, brilliant, fabulous, just outgoing, wonderful, warm, so smart fella. He said no a few times because I wasn't willing to move to Mooresville. But no's not an answer I'm usually too friendly with, so we kept talking. And uh by about 5 o'clock, 5.30 that afternoon, that no turned into when can we talk in person? It was a great conversation. yeah, so don't let me call you for a job and you think it's going to be a no. uh proven to work out that way. But John hired me as a director of education and outreach and then said you're going to do education and sales because we're a startup and nobody has one job. Yeah. quick question on the pet screening. Give us like a one sentence, two sentence synopsis about what pet screening is. I love that. think that's a great way to approach it. So pet screening helps all the housing providers out there manage their no pet households, each of household pets and their assistance animals, right? And with assistance animals, you've got the requests for reasonable accommodations, right? So we're helping all our clients put their best paw forward in the areas of data, time, risk and revenue management with everything we're doing. Pet puns are flying. You guys would just dodge them as they come. Yeah Well I was going to say that sounds like the tagline. Tell me that's the tagline when you go to the website. Put our best paw forward? that? No? coming up with different. Yeah, just coming off. I found a new way to, now I'm the vice president of education. I got a promotion. I get to not sell and educate. So I'm super excited. I get to focus on the education part. And I was looking for new ways to sign my emails because I've been signing them, Meow Regards for five years. And because I'm the kiddie person, I said to John, you sign your emails, Wolf Regards. If I come to work for you, can I sign my emails, Meow Regards? And he said, you can sign them any way you want. And so now I'm signing them. Pausing for education. Dodge all the puns, they're just going to keep flying. I love them, yeah. them. Yeah, keep in common. We'll be ranking them at the very end of the podcast. We'll do it a ranking of puns. Yeah. Well, clearly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. When all my dog friends are outside in the cold and the rain and the heat, I'm in bed with a cat that I don't have to let out or take a walk. No, I'm with you 100%. I also like dogs, but cats, just like, yeah, it's like a cheat code to owning a pet. They know how to go to the bathroom in a box themselves. It's crazy. And you don't have to come home at a particular time. Having cats is like having a teenager. Having a dog is like having a toddler. Okay, I get that comparison, that makes sense. Yep, yep. But I want to go back for just a second because one thing I didn't say in my my quick sentence overview is we're free. We provide the service, helping folks really get a handle on, as I said, there are no pet households or pets and assistance animals and the whole fair housing thing of accommodation requests. You we're doing all that data time, risk and revenue management, but we're doing it at no cost to our industry clients. That's the cool thing that John Bradford and his team, his initial team, you know, came up with. And I think it's brilliant. For sure. That's awesome. Well, I mean, clearly you're passionate about it. Is the passion just from like a general love of like animals and like making sure like or did it come from a specific places? Like you as a renter, you as a homeowner, like in your like where did this gen like where did it come from? I would love to hear about that. Yeah. at my largest in my last portfolio, had 20 assets. And so there were 13 mobile home communities, excuse me, seven mobile home communities, 13 apartment communities, and then six, five, six, seven, eight HOAs at a time just for fun. But in my work running the assets and the teams, I was the person who all the reasonable accommodation requests would come to, reasonable accommodations for changes or adjustments to policies and or reasonable modifications for changes possibly to the structure the property or parking spaces or things of that nature. So I handled all of this and I didn't realize as an operator that there was a pet screening. And when I realized that there was a pet screening out there and I knew how much time I had spent on it and I knew how intimidating fair housing was to the industry, right? Because if you get something wrong and somebody asks for a service animal at an airline, they're not going to sue that desk agent, They're going to sue Delta. But in our industry, when they have a fair housing complaint and or lawsuit, that leasing agent who's sitting at that front desk with a month of experience in the business, their name is going to be on the HUD complaint and or HUD lawsuit, their name and potentially their personal assets along with their company's assets because everybody in the chain of communication and command is going to be on that complaint and that lawsuit. So I have a fair housing class that I've written called you bet your assets because these folks are betting their assets on their understanding of fair housing in the business. That's intimidating and tough. You know, some people are going to leave the industry thinking, this is so complex, is it worth it for me? Right? Or be frustrated by the industry. And I don't want that. I want them to love the industry like I do. And this is something we can move out of their way. It doesn't have to be intimidating in their day. And they can get on to the other things that they really love. Most folks get in the business because they love delivering value and experiences. Value to the owners and investors and renters, experiences to the renters. And that's what fills their tank. This scary, intimidating stuff, other s***. move that out of their way so they get to the juice, right? That's an awesome way to look at it. mean, of two guys that don't really know much about real estate, property management and all this stuff. Like this whole podcast has been a learning experience for us, but it's been great to have people that have come in and be great teachers that are able to kind of take what they love, take what they're passionate about, distill it down and make it sure that we're able to kind of handle it in like little bite-sized chunks. And it's really fun to be able to learn that way. a teacher in many ways, shape and form and like, and it's got to be so fulfilling to be able to watch as people you know you pass on that information and watch them grow and take it and you know do their own awesome stuff with it, you Yeah, the light bulb moments really are the juice for me. And, you know, I've got all those experiences on site working with people and helping them find their homes and having them walk into a new home that's nicer than anything they've ever lived in and the tears and all the great joyful moments on site. But I realized in those nine years, I was facilitating education at night that I really love giving those light bulb moments. So when COVID came and in 2020, I got a chance to do a 2.0 kind of move. was a friend of mine, another John, who I sat down at lunch with and kind of had my light bulb moment. And he said, let me introduce you to John Bradford again at PET Screening. Because I'd met John B once before. He said, let me introduce him to you again. And so I had my light bulb moment and came to this conclusion that teaching and facilitating is something I really, really love. Helping people in the industry feel consistent, confident, and graceful. That just fills the cup up. It's awesome. So yeah, quick question. Before I knew anything about real estate, maybe even before like 20 minutes ago, I may have assumed that something like pet screening is maybe a bit more of like a niche topic in real estate. But as we're talking here, I'm realizing so many Americans have pets. Is it 70? Okay, I was gonna ask, 70%. Would you say like pet screening pretty much affects 70 % of like landlords and renters like total or like what's who's kind like the base of people you're working with and what are like the main roles that that pets play with your like day to day? Oh God. pets don't just affect the households that own the pets because people who live in rental properties will have a friend come over, a loved one, a companion. They'll bring a visiting pet on property. That pet bites somebody or does damage in that home. And that landlord is left to deal with it. That operator is left to deal with it. Many of the dog bite lawsuits in this country that happen are often from no pet households. we with again, John B and our Some of our early clients helped us with this. I think it was maybe first communities that might've helped us understand that we needed not only a household pet profile, which is a digital record about the pets, and one about the assistance animals, we needed a no pet profile so that you could have folks say, I don't have any pets and I understand, I'm not supposed to have any visiting pets either. Outside my home, inside my home for any length of time period, right? So that when that dog bite lawsuit comes in because the no pet household had a visitor, their dog jumped out of the off leash in the parking lot to use the restroom while they stopped over for a minute, ran over and bit a child in the face, God forbid, the operator has the no pet profile that says, I understand and agree that won't happen. And that's what the landlords need. Every landlord needs who accepts pets or, you know, we can only work with those who accept pets and everybody should be accepting pets nowadays because they're just too prevalent. If you're not accepting pets, you just have a community full of assistance animals. But there's no de facto assistance animals. of them right. So every household is impacted by this that's a rental household. Every owner and operator of a household that's a rental needs to focus on their risk management right. So 66 to 75 percent of households will settle on 70 percent don't have to argue there have pets or animals. That by my math means there's got to be at 1.6 of these per household you got to have north of 51 million pets in housing. Mm. I mean, it's out there. It's everywhere. Only 40 % of households have children. Pets are the new kids, and so we have to deal with this as operators. We should be screening our renters and we have to be screening their pet and their furry family right there with them. That should be happening together. So what are some of, when you say screening the pet slash furry family, I like that word. What are some of the main like screening, I don't know if tactics is the right word or things that you look for when screening a pet? So. Folks who are out there operating who are accepting pets have pet policies oftentimes, right? What breeds don't they accept? Only about 20 % of operators are operating without breed restrictions right now, right? So 80 % of the operators out there have breed restrictions. About 30 % are operating without a weight limit. So the other 70 % have a weight limit, right? And so they have pet policies and we set up a system for them where we input their policies, their restrictions into our system. And we're going to give every a one to five Paul Fido score. Go ahead and fall in love with that because it's cute. Wait, is the... but wow, that's that's pretty funny. Fido score. They're so great. uh standard term? that is no that is that is trademark to pet screening. That is John B. You guys have to know to let me not bury the lead. We were the first out of the box. This is this is his idea. Everybody else out there is is is a a come along. They've come along after we proved that this business model makes sense. We're eight years in the business. We're in almost eight million doors, one out of every seven rentals we're serving. Right. Right. We're the big dog, the original OG dog. right? And so it is awesome to be us. And so we've got a, it really is. We've got a Fido score for every pet one to five paw, but whatever our clients tell us. Now think about it. If you're managing uh multiple properties, know, quadplex here, 10 plex there, 50 apartments here, a hundred there, and you have different owners, they have different policies. It can be tough for a company to keep all that lined up. I've done third party and owner operated management. It can be tough. And so we can set this up for our clients. where property A, this 100 apartments over here has one set of policies, property B of 50 over here has a different, right? And so we'll put those restrictions in. And we also have additional restrictions if they say they require spare neutering, right? uh That can be a restriction. And whatever the pet, when the owner of the pet, the pet parent, creates the pet profile, anything in that pet profile of all the data points and 20 some odd additional behavioral and history questions, about that pet and pet parent, if they trigger anything on those restrictions, we'll deliver a zero FIDO score on that pet. So the people operating that asset or those assets know this pet's a no. And they don't have to keep all that in mind, right? Then they can go look at the profile and see why. But one of the things that we give our clients that most people have never thought to do, and this is really getting ahead of the lawsuits, is asking the pet and assistance animal owners, has your pet or assistance animal ever bitten a person? Because when an animal bites somebody the question is what did you know and if you knew nothing well that's not gonna help you because then they're gonna ask you what you should have known and what you did about it and By asking the question and having an SOP that says we don't welcome biters that would produce a zero phyto score Look at my SOP zero phyto pets are not to be rented to I didn't know it had I known it look here again They wouldn't have been living here They didn't tell the truth if you're telling me this pet has a bite history the owner didn't tell the truth and I have no way to help with that. Can't fix dishonesty. Interesting I did want to double back. Sorry Patrick I did want to double back really quickly the difference between pets and assistance animals because you did bring up a quick moment where it's like I Know that you said it was kind of like a jest in your voice or saying like if you don't accept if you don't accept pets in your in your place You're basically just accepting a whole heck of a lot of service animals. So What is that difference? I mean because that's the thing is that like as we're both renters Patrick I don't know if you can you can give your opinion to It's like I see a lot more places when I was hunting for my last place, like there is a lot more places in Cincinnati than not that I found that were like no pets allowed, no pets allowed, no pets allowed. So like what is the, what's the difference to you? mean, emotional sport animals, service animals, like how does this all come into play really? Well, now you've gotten into my You Bet Your Assets education session. But I'll give you a quick one because that session can be 45 minutes. And then I have gone as much as almost two hours in length with the questions from Multifamily Northwest. I was on the call for two hours almost. So, so we won't go there. But assistance animals. So have fair housing in property management. 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1968 Title 8, the Fair Housing Act 1988 amended to include the protected class of disability. So when you're operating properties you have seven federally protected classes possibly additional wherever your listeners are operating right and so one of those is the class of disability and so with the disability class folks can ask for reasonable modifications to the structure or the property like parking spaces they can request reasonable accommodations to your rules policies or practices and so somebody says I have an assistance animal I am disabled this animal either provides a service it was trained to provide to me for my disability that's a service animal or it is not a dog that's trained at some other animal is trained or is providing emotional support to me that's ameliorating one or more of the symptoms associated with my disability that's a support animal so I have either a service or support animal and I'm going to ask you to set aside your pet policies if you don't take pets so you're setting that aside maybe you take pets but not my dog's breed maybe you don't take a dog my dog's size so I'm asking for a reasonable accommodation to your policies or practices to make room for my assistance animal that essentially is an assistive device to me, whether it's a service or support animal. Part of I will call it my treatment plan, my life plan for living with my disability. And you have to receive all reasonable accommodation requests. Consider any requests that comes your way. Even if they say I have six emotional support Chihuahuas. Now your leaders problem, your listeners probably can't see my face to hear me say this, but they walk in and say I've got six emotional support Chihuahuas happened to a client, they need to have resting, watch me you guys, resting, fair housing face, right? They need, they need to seriously take a beat, keep that poker face on and they need to consider legally every reasonable accommodation request, right? And so then they have to think about what they're going to do with that. And so if you say, don't take any pets, they're disingenuous. I know it's a surprise, but there are disingenuous people out there on TikTok teaching people you can save money. and have any pet you want by just telling people you're disabled and that's your assistance animal and you know we'll tell you how to get a letter for that on the internet and how to fake and bake it and roll forward. Now that's a problem and so that's what happens to these properties that say I don't take any pets. They're losing out on a ton of money. The ability to lengthen the duration of stay for their renters, They're losing so much financially by not welcoming pets. The risk of damage to the unit is far outweighed by what you can charge and get for the reward, right, and all the other rewards that come with it. And so what's happening is they're just going to end up with de facto assistance animals. Gotcha. So, so essentially, if somebody has a no pet policy, people because of these like fair housing laws and things like the support and service animals, people can have animals in their unit anyways, essentially. And then the landlord who has the no pet policy is then missing out on pet rent and pet deposits and things like that. Is that, is that kind of like the general gist? Okay. or deposits that move in. can be monthly pet fees. these folks are supposed to, disabled individuals have this as a federal civil right. And I think that it's wonderful. Everybody with a disability should have a treatment and a life plan for having the most wonderful life and their ability to function and the quality of life that they can achieve with anything that we can work with for them in our housing right, reasonably. But the folks who are going out there faking and baking it to save a dollar or get a pet where they want a pet, where it's not supposed to be, they're making it harder for all the disabled folks out there, right? And so pet screening without being a barrier to the disabled is actually standing up for their rights of the disabled by having a process. We help our clients by taking on the entire reasonable accommodation request process. Because to your question, Patrick, they're not just supposed to have them in their home. They're supposed to request a reasonable accommodation to that owner's no pet policy or pay for a pet here. No, this isn't a pet. The accommodation is it's an assistance animal. accommodation for the disabled, right? So they're supposed to go through a process to do it, but a lot of folks are okay with going through that process disingenuously and making it up as they go along. Gotcha, okay. You mentioned the hidden pets aspect, so it's like someone that maybe just doesn't decide to go through the compliance at all and they're just like hiding be compliant to that aspect as a landlord or property manager? mean, are there ways that you have to handle that very delicately, I'm assuming? You can't really go at that very strong. Well, you can have a great policy that protects your assets, then also shows you these kind of things that you need to know. When I had the assets, the 13 apartment communities, we had a policy that every apartment was visited. A quality assurance visit took place every quarter, right? And so you're going in and you're looking at every apartment every quarter. You're looking for maybe things that maintenance didn't finish doing for the renter. They patched the wall, but they didn't sand and paint it. Maybe there are things that haven't been reported that could be damaging to the asset. or costly to the asset operator so they want to go in and do that, write work orders when you see it. Maybe you're finding evidence of pets in the house. Maybe as you're walking past you see that telltale breakage of the corner of the blinds in the window where the cat pushed through so they could sit in the window and enjoy the sun that day. Maybe maintenance is visiting periodically to replace air conditioning filters or check on something or they're doing a work order and every time they go in a unit unless they know for certainty they've told you this times that renters live there for how long. Every time they go in a unit and see evidence of a pet, they're reporting that back to the property management team, right? So they can do their due diligence for risk and revenue management, data and time management, right? So those are the ways you look at this. Inspections, check from the outside, cats will give you a telltale, maintenance can be checking on it all the time as well. Okay, cool. Gotcha. I have like some hypothetical questions here. don't know how in the weeds we want to get. But so because I feel like when we're talking about pets, a lot of this conversation revolves around cats and dogs. know, what about like things like, for example, like fish or like hermit crabs or things that like, I don't know, I kind of consider to more like decorative than like, you know, than like a. Not to say that they're not animals or anything like that, but there's a difference between owning a fish tank and then having a German Shepherd, you know what I mean? how non cat and dog pets, maybe caged pets, how do those fit into this whole conversation with people with no pet policies and things like that? Yeah, absolutely. Great question, Patrick. So let's talk about the caged animals. We'll call those the exotics. Although they might not be too exotic, it could be a hamster, right? For all the caged and or exotic creatures, there's a bearded dragon in my house along with three cats. My daughter's got a big lovely tank for the bearded dragon. People I've had, renters have rats for their children. They think they're really great, really clean, really smart pets. We see rabbits at pet screening a lot and HUD has previously declared them basically a domesticated animal. So landlords, it's incumbent upon them to have great policies and practices, right? Do you welcome fish tanks? What's your tank limit? Do you require renter's insurance that specifically covers the tank? Because I sat in my house one day and listened to a noise that I didn't understand and then a gush as a 40 gallon tank with freshwater fish in it shattered all on its own and flooded the apartment I was living in as the manager of the community. right? So your landlords have to have policies. Fish are welcome, tanks over this amount have to be, you know, have insurance tanks are welcome up to this amount, nothing bigger than that. You know, they have to think through these policies. Do you take chinchillas? Maybe yes. And hamsters? Yes. But do you allow ferrets? Probably not because even decented they're smelly. Right. Do you take small birds? Sure. But do you take the big ones? Because I've seen people let them run amok and chew all the door frames. How do you feel about that? So as a landlord, you have to come up with your policies and your SOPs for how to handle that and know the risks and what you're willing to tolerate and charge where you're taking any risk of damage or liability and, you know, rock on. You know, where people are welcomed with their furry families, their beaked bird families, their little rodent families, that's where they want to live. And when you have not pet friendly, pet tolerant, but pet passionate policies, you can increase the length of the stay of the renter by 21%. Money drop, not mic drop, money drop. At an $1,800 a month rent, that's almost $10,000 more per renter that you're welcoming to one of your rentals. And they're staying almost six months longer than the national average of 27 and a half months, bounce that up to 33 months. sorry Pat, would some of these animals like you call them exotic, whatever you want to call them, they would have their own, do you have ways to track them with pet screening and have a FIDO score for an animal like that or is that something that's like on the roadmap? I know that must be harder for you, but like I'm curious where you guys are at with that. We do have pet profiles for other pets, non-traditional pets. And we have seen many folks request non-traditional and even farmyard, barnyard variety animals for reasonable accommodations for people living with disabilities. And so we've experienced everything from pigs to bearded dragons, to cats, to dogs, to rabbits, to snakes. Between the pets and assistance animals, we've probably seen most things. I do know there are landlords out there that say every creature that's not human in your house has to go through pet screening and have a profile, right? And I have others that say if it lives in a kennel and doesn't come out of a kennel or cage, no. Anything that comes out of a kennel or cage, that's where our risks really exist. And that's what we want to have a pet or a pet profile on, right? That's so there's that whole range of what a landlord will say their policies are, but we help them effect and implement their policies. And I have a a session called Pets are the New Kids that helps them think through what their policies ought to be, understanding who the renters are and what they want. Okay, cool. we're starting to wind down. We've got we got a few more minutes left with you. It's been a pleasure talking with you so far. It's been really informative and entertaining. It's giving me some things to think about that I didn't really ever think about with. I don't know, Patrick, do you if you have time to sneak in one extra question, I was going to ask Victoria if you have any like last minute tips or tricks landlords can implement with pets. Specifically like anything that we really didn't cover but Patrick if you had something else you want to chime in with I mean feel free to fire away two more questions. One is like totally like not the most important thing that you had talked about It's just I'm thinking it you said the bird that like eats a doorknob like what kind of bird did I understand the work? Okay, okay beaky animals, the bigger, beaky fellas really like to have something to gnaw on. And if they're left on a perch, they might find their way around all the door frames. I found one apartment like that. All the door frames were like just about gone. I'm like I was over here like do people have like Emperor penguins like going around and just like I'm like, what is that? Okay, that is Okay Okay penguins. Well, if you do come across an Emperor Penguin, please feel free to come back on the Rentech pod so we can talk about it. We'll be more in depth, yeah. Okay. to your tips, welcome, welcome their furry family when we're talking about pets or assistance animals, welcome their furry family. They will you will rent 10 days faster. I have read you will have twice as many applicants, you know, 10 days faster at 1800 bucks a month rent that's $600 more per move in and having twice as many applicants who's going to say no to that, right? The average national damage from a pet is $210 when they move out. So if you charge a two or $300 upfront pet fee that you're putting all in bank and then a monthly pet fee as well all that's going in the bank and you're going to be insulated against many many damage costs and you can always bill for the difference but meanwhile you'll have rented your rental you know if you hit that national average of 27 and a half months great if you're truly pet passionate and you get bumped that to 33 months almost 10 grand more even better before you have to turn that rental again these are the lessons that we know because 97 percent of people who own pets consider them family they're not moving without them and probably 70 % of homes have them. So really just embrace this, build the value of your assets off of this, put the hard flooring in there, stop worrying about the carpet, you know, and make it kind of pet proof and then just have that joy and help them have that joy and that profitability for you as well all at same time. that's You've plugged a few things, courses, pet screening, obviously there's tons of stuff out there, but where can listeners learn more and find your resources? Like if you had to lay it all out on the table right now, where can they find more about you? Petscreening.com and then there's a tab on there about education. If your association or your company has a number of people you want to have an educational session with me, happy to do it. Industry math, fair housing, mental health, pet marketing, total pet management, risk management in this area. We can talk about all the things. If you've got an industry event coming up, I'm happy to put together a panel. I just did Pooper Traders, Barkers and Biters. And that panel delivered, uh just slayed the value, you know, for the audience. It was amazing. Cool, that's awesome. Okay, Victoria, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Keep us posted about that emperor penguin. We'll be waiting with bated breath. Folks out there, if you have questions, obviously there's gonna be resources that you can check out. We'll link to some of Victoria's resources in petscreening.com, obviously in the description of the show. But email questions at therentishpod.com if you have any questions for us or about the show in general. Victoria, it's been awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out with us on the show. Thank you for having me. It's been awesome. Paw-some. It's been awesome, You had a chance to drop it, but you missed. Drop it. Well, I couldn't take the honor. The honor is all, it has to be yours, Sure, not a problem at all. Alright everybody, you