Complex Regulatory Issue
Pet ownership has surged in recent years, with the U.S. pet population growing an estimated 18% from 153M pets in 2019 to 180M pets in 2024(1). This growth has contributed to the vast majority of property owners and managers offering pet-friendly accommodations. However, it coincided with increasing regulatory complexity surrounding assistance animals and reasonable accommodation requests under the Fair Housing Act. Under the Fair Housing Act, all property owners, not just those with pet-friendly accommodations, must grant reasonable accommodation requests to qualifying residents. This means that someone with an assistance animal is able to move into communities that do not allow pets, creating a challenge for all property owners and managers.
To add to the complexity, in the last few years multiple online providers of assistance animal or emotional support animal (ESA) letters have emerged, purporting to certify the validity of an assistance animal. However, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), documentation provided by these sites is insufficient when making a determination on a reasonable accommodation request(2). Property owners and managers are forced into making determinations they are ill-equipped to make both in terms of personnel and subject matter expertise.
Multi-faceted Value Prop for Property Owners and Managers
Reviewing reasonable accommodation requests is both a resource and regulatory burden for property owners and managers, but pets also represent a revenue opportunity for property owners. Pet rent is charged almost universally by property owners and managers to help offset the wear-and-tear of pets, but the lack of pet policy enforcement leads to missed revenue opportunities as well as additional legal liability associated with effectively managing the pet population of a community. Effective pet policy enforcement can generate additional revenue through the collection of pet rent while also reducing the legal liability of property owners and managers by ensuring all tenants disclose their pets and agree to comply with community pet policies (e.g., breed restrictions, leash rules, etc.). Empowering property owners and managers to effectively establish and enforce pet policies has been an overlooked segment of the long-term rental market.
As such, we are thrilled to announce that we have co-led an $80M Series B investment in PetScreening, the leading pet policy management platform helping housing providers manage residents’ pets and assistance animals while generating opportunities for pet-related revenue.
Enter PetScreening
When Volition first met PetScreening’s founder and CEO John R. Bradford, III, it was clear that he was passionate about pets and had the subject matter expertise to build a more pet-friendly world. He embarked on this journey in 2017 with a simple vision – to make the world more pet inclusive no matter where you live, work, play, or stay. Since that time, PetScreening has pioneered how property managers and pet owners navigate pet policies and risk management, emerging as the clear market leader in pet policy management for long-term rentals.
The Volition team was impressed by the rapid penetration that PetScreening achieved in long-term rentals in a capital-efficient manner. However, it was the vision of building a holistic digital pet profile as a means of creating a more pet inclusive world that we became even more enamored with. As a testament to the team’s dedication to this vision, PetScreening has continued to innovate for pet owners by launching a no-cost, one-of-a-kind “Amber Alert” service for lost dogs (FidoAlert) and cats (TabbyAlert) and acquiring a veterinarian-driven content asset, BetterPet.com.
PetScreening now serves more than 7 million rental units in the multifamily, single-family, student, affordable, manufactured and military base sectors nationwide. Since its launch, the company has processed more than 3.5 million pet profiles, helped owners and operators capture nearly $300 million in pet-related revenue that otherwise would have been lost, and reunited more than 45 thousand lost pets with their owners.
The company has deep domain expertise and the resources to capture this significant untapped market opportunity with its strong value proposition for both operators and consumers. We are confident that John and the PetScreening team are the right team to make this vision a reality. We are thrilled to welcome PetScreening to the portfolio and look forward to the journey to come.
Roger, Kyle, Sinjon and Nikki
Citations
(1) American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), U.S. Pet Ownership Statistics
(2) U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHEO-2020-01
