About Us
I’m Ryan Blunden and this is my little man, Tonka. Tonka is a fantastic staffy, with heaps of energy, personality and lots of love to give his family and friends. Not one day goes by when I don’t smile at the funny things he does, the faces he pulls and the sheer joy he brings to me and everyone around me. I love him to bits.
A few years ago I nearly had to give Tonka up because I was finding it so hard to find somewhere suitable for the two of us to live. It was such a distressing and worrying time (for both Tonka and I) that I swore I would do what ever I could to prevent other people from having to experience the same kind of stress.
Why I started Pet Friendly Rentals?
I started Pet Friendly Rentals because I know first hand how hard it can be for pet owners to find rental properties easily and I had to do something to help.
The sad truth is that many people who surrender their pets to organisations such as the RSPCA and the Animal Welfare League cite a lack of pet friendly housing as the reason they have to give up their family pet. Considering the growth in Australian house prices, buying a house will continue to be out of the reach of many pet lovers for some time and so as the demand for rental properties increases every year it’s not going to get any easier for renters with pets to find a home.
As my background is in web design and programming, I have the technological know-how to do something about this. Through this site I hope to be able to combine my area of expertise with my passion to make a difference to such an important community (and family) need.
What’s happened so far?
When I started pet friendly rentals some 3 years ago, my intention was to try and save people the hours upon hours of time it takes to read through hundreds of rental listings in search for the few that allow pets. At that stage, I thought that if I could somehow do the searching for them and pull all the pet friendly listings together in the one place, that this would make a real difference.
So I wrote a programming script that would search existing property websites for pet friendly homes and duplicate their details on the Pet Friendly Rentals website. I thought this would be the answer, but it wasn’t long before I came across a heap of technical and other obstacles to taking this approach and I was back to square one.
In the meantime, when pet owners contacted me for help all I could do was search the various real estate sites - manually – trying to pull together a list of properties, the LONG way.
Many people who I spoke to said that this whole thing was a bad idea, and too hard for one person to achieve on their own.
So to get some help, I wrote to real estate agents and online sites, seeking their permission and support for what I was trying to achieve, but I received no reply. Not even one!
Before too long I found myself with less and less time to keep up with manually searching for everyone who contacted me but I knew I couldn’t abandon my idea and that I had to find another way around this. And finally, I did!
The site you’re looking at now reflects the solution I found.
Rather than duplicate (and centralise) pet friendly rental listings from the various real estate sites on the Pet Friendly Rentals website, the extension tool I’ve developed enables you to find them quickly and easily on their sites instead. Different approach but same outcome!
Using the ever popular Firefox web browser, this extension tool currently works with realestate.com.au but it wont be long before it will also work with other online real estate sites as well.
What’s planned for the future?
Update (October 2008): I’ve just made the decision to transition from my current employment to working on Pet Friendly Rentals full time as of January 2009. Read more…
Support for all major Australian Real Estate websites is the first priority, but we’ll soon expand our services to include:
- Resources to increase your chances of being approved for pet friendly rental housing
- Interviews with experts in this field
- Opportunities to find temporary homes for your pets if you are travelling or unable to have your pet live with you for a short period of time.
In addition to continuing to help make it easier for responsible pet owners (like you and me) to find suitable rental properties I also hope to ease the concerns that many property owners have about renting their houses to people with pets.