Rightmove data shows pet-friendly rental searches have fallen by more than half since England’s new tenant protections took hold, a sharp reversal that reveals how quickly behaviour shifts when the law changes, and how much confusion the change has left in its wake.
Searches by prospective tenants filtering for properties that accept pets dropped 54% in May and 52% in June compared with the same months a year earlier, according to figures Rightmove shared with the BBC and confirmed via its press centre.
The backdrop makes the drop look all the more dramatic. Rightmove had previously reported that demand from tenants enquiring about pet-friendly properties had surged 120% year-on-year, far outpacing a 13% rise in total tenant demand, partly driven by the pandemic pet boom in which more than a third of UK households acquired a pet after the first lockdown in March 2020. The pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, and fast.
What the Renters’ Rights Act actually says about pets
The Renters’ Rights Act came into force on 1 May 2026. Its pet provisions imply into all private assured tenancies a right for existing tenants to request permission to keep a pet, which landlords cannot unreasonably withhold. Alongside this, the Act abolished Section 21 no-fault evictions and moved all private tenancies to a periodic basis.
The critical word is ‘request’. The right belongs to tenants who have already signed, not to applicants still browsing Rightmove. As The Independent Landlord makes clear, landlords can still advertise properties as ‘No Pets’ and decline applicants before any tenancy begins. That distinction is precisely where the misunderstanding bites.
‘Landlords must consider requests fairly and cannot unreasonably refuse them, but they can still decline where there is a valid reason,’ said Megan Eighteen, immediate past president of ARLA Propertymark, the lettings agents’ trade body. She said there was plenty of ‘potential for misunderstanding’ among tenants about what pet-friendly actually means.
Valid grounds for refusal include a co-tenant’s allergy, a property too small for a large or multiple pets, an illegal animal, or, as the government’s official guide explicitly states, a superior landlord (freeholder) who prohibits pets. That last route alone covers a large share of the leasehold stock.
Pet-friendly rental searches mask a more complex picture for landlords
The fall in pet-friendly rental searches does not mean pet ownership has left the rental sector. It means tenants have worked out they no longer need to announce it upfront. Marc von Grundherr, director of agency Benham and Reeves, said some tenants have only disclosed a pet after signing their tenancy agreement, while others have been discovered during property inspections.
‘The reality is that tenants now understand the balance of power has shifted. Landlords can no longer rely on a blanket ‘no pets’ policy to deter applications and should instead expect conversations around pet ownership to arise much later in the letting process,’ he said.
That shift creates new practical pressures. Under the Act’s provisions, landlords who consent to a pet may require the tenant to take out pet-damage insurance. But they cannot demand an additional deposit, and new insurance or mortgage policies that would require insurers or lenders to discriminate against pet-owning tenants are unenforceable from 30 April 2026. Deductions for proven pet-related damage from the existing tenancy deposit remain permissible at the end of a tenancy.
Chris Norris, chief policy officer at the National Residential Landlords Association, said landlords faced a genuine gap: no power to compel tenants to take out insurance, no legal right to request an extra deposit, and a burden of costs should a pet cause damage.
None of that sits easily against a rental market that, for all its recent easing, remains tight. Rightmove’s Q4 2025 Rental Trends Tracker found the supply of available homes to rent was 9% higher year-on-year at the end of 2025, but still 33% below levels of a decade earlier. Average advertised rents rose 2.2% across 2025. The average number of enquiries per available rental home fell to ten from fourteen in 2024, though it remained above the pre-pandemic 2019 average of six. Supply is recovering; it is not yet recovered.
Russell Hunt, founder of Pets Lets, which matches clients with pet-friendly rentals, argued that landlords should lean on pet CVs and judge animals individually, noting that older dogs tend to be calmer and less disruptive than blanket ‘large dog’ categories imply.
The test of the new regime will not come from search statistics. It will come from the first wave of refused pet requests that tenants choose to contest. How broadly courts and adjudicators interpret ‘unreasonable’ will define what the Act actually delivers for renters and their animals.
