The COVID-19 pandemic meant many of us were spending more time at home, isolating ourselves from friends and family in our homes. For homeowners, having a pet was a readily accessible source of comfort during a potentially lonely time. This weekly update, we look at the state-of-play in pet-friendly listings, where a landlord explicitly states intent to grant permission for a potential tenant.

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Sydney leads the way for pet-friendly listings, though the size of the market and the meaningfulness of a phrase like ‘pet-friendly’ in a listing is highest in New South Wales. A landlord in New South Wales is under no obligation to grant permission to tenants who wish to have a pet living in the property, and tenants are required to submit a request to landlords to have one residing with them. 

This is also the case with Perth and South Australia, whose lower pet-friendly listings reflect the smaller markets. Northern Territory similarly allows landlords to choose whether pets reside with their tenants, but must reply to a tenants letter of intent to house a pet within 14 days of notification to reject the pet.

Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and ACT do not grant landlords automatic right to refuse pets on their property, and rejecting a pet application requires a department-approved reason to do so. This explains their lower numbers for pet-friendly listings, as it is the default state of a rental listing to grant this permission upon application. In all states, it is still necessary to apply for a pet. Will this change in the future?

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We can also see that for the most part, suburbs have a relatively flat and short distribution of properties, with pet-friendly listings being a rarity. As access to pets becomes easier, there is a good chance that these expressions of permission for pets appear more frequently, as giving this permission is likely to attract a larger pool of prospective tenants. 

Suburbs with high concentrations of apartments like Macquarie Park and Belconnen stand out, as landlords with more than one unit in a block may employ one agent for all apartments and use the same listing for the units in that apartment. Northcote is a clear outlier, and is an example of a leader in frequent granting of early permission to tenants.