Looking for a new place to live can be a stressful process at the best of times. However, if you’re a pet owner, things can be a little more complicated. Unfortunately, many landlords and letting agents do not accept tenants who intend to bring animals into the property. This can leave you and your four-legged friends in a bit of a bind. So, how do you find a new place to rent that will accept your cat, dog, hamster or any other animal accomplice?
Well, some property websites have an excellent function whereby you can choose to view only properties that will accept your furry friends. The number of pet-friendly properties available can vary quite dramatically from place to place, making some parts of the country much more accessible to pet owners than others. With this in mind, we wanted to find out which states, towns and cities have the largest proportion of homes available to rent that also accept pets.
Looking at the top fifty most populated US cities, we’ve recorded the proportion of properties available to rent that also accept pets. Additionally, we’ve found out the percentage of available rents in each state that will accept a tenant with pets, revealing the best places in the country for pet owners to live.
We’ve also investigated how well the UK compares, having looked at the 50 largest towns and cities outside of London, as well as individually looking at each London borough, in order to unveil the parts of the country that are the best places for pet owners to rent. So, if you’re looking to move yourself and your beloved kitty to a new home simply read on, and you could be unpacking the cat food in a brand new apartment in no time at all!
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Illinois is the best state in the country for pet owners who are looking to rent, with 59.87% of properties accepting pets. So if you’re a pet owner looking to move to a new part of the country, Illinois might be a good bet for you!
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The second-best state for renting with pets is Mississippi, with 52.28% of lets being available to pet owners. This makes Mississippi the most pet-friendly of all the Southern states, and a great place for pet owners to live.
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New York is the third best state in the country for pet-friendly renting, with 47.89% of properties allowing tenants to bring their pets. This high percentage makes New York the best state on the East coast for living with your pets.
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The state with the least pet-friendly rental market is Hawaii, where only 6.09% of landlords accept tenants with pets. It seems the island state has little room for pets, so enjoying this Polynesian paradise with your pets could be a pipe dream.
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Alaska has the second-lowest rate of pet-friendly rentals, as just 9.30% of properties in the state are available to pet owners. Unfortunately, you’ll have a hard time finding a den for you and your four-legged friends to curl up and keep cosy in the US’ most northerly state.
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The third worst state for renting with pets is West Virginia, as only 9.47% of properties here allow pets on the premises. With less than one in ten properties here offering pet-friendly accommodation, house hunting here can be a tricky prospect for anyone with a furry companion.
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Rank |
State |
Pet Friendly Lets |
Total Lets |
% Pet Friendly Lets |
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New York City is the best city in the US for living with pets, as almost two-thirds of rentals are available to pet owners. This makes it by far the easiest city in which to find a suitable place to live for you and your animal friends.
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With just over half of all properties accepting tenants with pets, Charlotte is the second-best place in the USA for living with pets.
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The third best city in the USA for pet owners to rent is Arlington Texas, where almost 50% of properties allow you to bring you animal companions.
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The worst place in the USA for renting with pets is Fresno, California, where only 4.88% of properties allow you to live with pets. This equates to less than one in twenty properties, making it very difficult to find a suitable home for you and your pets.
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The second worst city for finding a place to live with your pets is San Jose, also in California. Here, only 6.24% of rental properties are available to pet owners, making finding a place to live quite difficult.
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The city with the third-lowest proportion of properties available to pet owners is Detroit, Michigan, where 6.85% of rentals allow you to keep pets. This is some way behind the 4th least pet-friendly city, Boston, in which 10% of properties are pet friendly.
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Rank |
City |
State |
Pet Friendly Lets |
Total Lets |
% Pet Friendly Lets |
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To begin with, we’ve examined the number of pet-friendly rentals in all of London’s 32 boroughs. By comparing the number of rentals that take pets with the total number of lettings in each area, we’ve found the locations that have the highest ratio of lets for pets.
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Barking and Dagenham is the London borough with the largest proportion of advertised rentals that will accept you if you have a pet. Here, as many as 12.54% of the total number of homes available to rent are listed as suitable for pets. At least now we know what all the barking is about in Dagenham!
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Sutton is the second-best borough in London to look for a new home for you and your pet, with 8% of properties accepting pets. Of the 475 properties listed available to rent, 38 were suitable for pet owners on the move.
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Bexley has the third-highest ratio of landlords that accept pets of all the London boroughs with 7.69% of properties being advertised as appropriate for pets. However, this only amounts to 15 individual rentals, so competition here might be tight!
Having looked at the London boroughs with the most rentals available to pet owners, we now turn our attention to the areas where landlords are the least keen on allowing pets into their properties.
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Enfield is the worst London borough for pet owners, as only 25 of the 1,012 listed rentals will allow pets on the property. This amounts to just 2.47% of available rentals in the borough.
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Hillingdon is the second worst London borough for pet owners who are looking to rent, as only 2.62% of landlords are willing to let their properties to people with animal companions.
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The nort-eastern borough of Redbridge is the third worst borough in London for pet-friendly properties, with only 2.64% of 1,364 properties being listed as suitable for pets.
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Rank |
London borough |
Pet Friendly Lets |
Total Lets |
% Pet Friendly Lets |
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Having looked at London in detail, we now turn our attention to the 50 largest UK towns and cities. Following the same method as before, we’ve identified which parts of the country are the best areas for pet owners looking for a new place to live.
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Poole is the best location in the country for pet-friendly properties, with 15.69% of landlords accepting tenants who want to bring animals into the home. While Poole’s smaller size means that there are relatively few pet-friendly options when compared to other towns and cities, they make up by far the largest proportion of lets for pet owners in our study.
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Glasgow has the second largest proportion of rental properties for pet owners, with 9.63% of advertised lets listed as pet-friendly. Scotland’s biggest city performs particularly well, with 65 out of 675 listed rentals being advertised as available to pet owners.
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Just missing out on second place is Middlesbrough, which came third with 9.30% of landlords accepting tenants with pets. This equates to 33 of 335 properties accepting tenants with pets.
These are the towns and cities with the fewest rental properties available to pet owners, as a percentage of the total number of rentals available.
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Newcastle is the worst city in the country for renting with pets, as only 1.92% of landlords will allow you to keep pets on the property.
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Huddersfield is the second-worst place in the country for pet-friendly rentals, with only 1.94% of properties being advertised as suitable for pets.
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The third-worst place for pet owners to rent is Coventry, as only 1.96% of the 3320 lets in the city allow pets to stay on the property.
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Rank |
Town / City |
Pet Friendly Lets |
Total Lets |
% Pet Friendly Lets |
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We wanted to find out which states, towns and cities in the USA and UK have the most renting options for pet owners. To find this out, we first gathered a list of the 50 most populous towns and cities in the UK outside of London from The Geographist, and also compiled a list of all 32 London boroughs. We also found the 50 most populated cities in the USA using data from World Population Review.
We then used Zoopla and Spare Room to search for the number of available lets in each UK location, and Zillow in each US location. All of these sites have a filter that can be used to identify lets that accept pets, so we recorded the number of pet-friendly lets in each location as well.
In order to rank the locations according to how many pet-friendly lets they have, we calculated the percentage of the total number of lets that are pet friendly. This allowed us to make direct comparisons between towns and cities of different sizes.
We treated London separately from other UK cities due to its sheer size, as each borough often had more results than many of the towns and cities. Also, when searching just for London in either of the property websites, the results would often hit their maximum limit, making the data unrepresentative.
