November 24, 2011
‘Lets with Pets’ Scheme sees UK Lettings Giant Sign Up
Earlier this year, The Dogs Trust started the Lets for Pets Scheme in a bid to encourage more landlords and letting agents to allow pets within private rental properties. This week saw the lettings giant Belvoir sign up to the scheme, with the hope that many of the franchised offices would take part.
Managing Director of Belvoir, Dorian Gonsalves, actively promotes the scheme and says that since adding a ‘pets allowed’ search parameter to their lettings website they have vastly increased their traffic. In a recent survey run by the Dogs Trust it emerged that a third of the 5,695 respondents failed to find suitable accommodation within the private rental sector because they had pets and that over a half had to search for between 2 and 12 months before they found a landlord willing to accept their pets.
A whopping three quarters admitted to navigating away from some lettings websites because they stated categorically ‘no pets’ and over 95% of people surveyed said they would use websites with a ‘pets considered’ search option above those that didn’t provide one.
The moral of the story…
Millions of people in the UK have pets and hundreds of thousands of these people are looking for privately rented property right now. Landlords who are willing to accept pets – with clauses in the tenancy agreement - have a much better chance of renting their property quickly. Similarly letting agents that add a ‘pets considered’ search option to their websites will get more people searching through them than through their competitors.
Not much to ask for the potential benefits is it?
