6 Best Assistance Animal Request Software for Landlords 2027

The category decision

Buy a dedicated assistance animal review service when those requests are the bottleneck, and keep your existing property management system for leases, rent, and maintenance. Among the general suites we checked, only Rentec Direct connects to an outside review service, and it does so by triggering PetScreening's screening links rather than reviewing the animal itself. Buildium and DoorLoop show no pet or assistance animal feature on the pricing pages we opened.

TL;DR: Shortlist PetScreening and OurPetPolicy for the review itself, then get a written price from each. Use Rentec Direct only if it is already your system of record. Skip Buildium and DoorLoop for this job.

Assistance animal request software is a system that receives a reasonable accommodation request for a service or support animal, checks the supporting documents, records the decision, and limits who can open the health information.

Key Takeaways

• Only PetScreening and OurPetPolicy describe a dedicated assistance animal review on their own product pages, and Findigs offers pet and assistance animal validation inside applicant screening.

• HUD's federal enforcement standard changed in May 2026, but state and local laws and private lawsuits did not change, so keep one written intake standard either way.

• Do not run a pet screening step or a pet fee on an assistance animal request, because DREDF says landlords cannot require pet screening for assistance animals.

• Three of the six vendors are quote-based for their review products, so get a written per-unit or per-plan figure before you commit.

• The general suites publish plan prices, but none of them shows an assistance animal review feature on the pages we opened.

• A workflow layer can route, log, and remind, but the accommodation decision has to stay with a named person.

How we evaluated these six tools

We weighted six criteria by how much each one changes whether a request is handled correctly and defensibly. Review workflow carries the most weight at 30%, because the review is the task a landlord most wants to hand off. Documentation and fair housing controls carry 20%, because poor handling of health details or a wrongly charged pet fee creates the legal exposure. Published pricing and integration with your management system carry 15% each, since a quote with no per-unit figure cannot be budgeted and a request that has to be re-keyed is a request that gets lost. Evidence quality and implementation support share the last 20%. These weights are our judgment, not a survey result, and we did not run any of the products. Every fact about a vendor comes from a page we opened, and vendor-reported claims are labeled as such.

The legal ground under this decision

HUD's fair housing office permanently rescinded its longstanding assistance animal guidance, and the change dates to a May 22, 2026 memo. Federal guidance rescinded: May 22, 2026 according to Holland & Knight (2026).

Under the new enforcement standard, HUD finds reasonable cause only where an animal is individually trained to perform tasks related to the requester's disability, which mirrors the ADA's service animal test. Untrained emotional support animals no longer get the same federal enforcement presumption. The same firm's summary says state and local laws are not affected by the federal change and that private lawsuits remain available, so a landlord's own policy still carries weight.

Two dates circulate. Some firms and bloggers say HUD withdrew the 2020 guidance in September 2025, and one vendor blog points to an April 2026 Federal Register notice. We could not open a HUD document that confirmed either date, so confirm the timeline with your attorney before you write a policy.

The disability-rights side is older and clearer. DREDF's guide says landlords cannot require pet screening for assistance animals, and it calls requiring that screening a fair housing violation, according to DREDF (2023). That rule shapes how you can use a review vendor: you must accept an assistance animal request through any channel, you must not require the requester to use a vendor portal, and a vendor review is optional back-office help that the requester never has to use. Ask your attorney to check this point along with the rest of your intake policy.

Who this is for

This guide is for an owner or operations lead at a small property management business who has started receiving assistance animal requests and is choosing a tool now. You need a documented intake, a named reviewer or a credible outside review, a clear answer on who can open health documents, and no pet fee charged against a requester.

Red flags: the vendor runs pet screening or charges a pet fee on an assistance animal request; it cannot say who can open the health documents; or it will not put a per-unit or per-plan price in writing before you sign.

The six products compared

The matrix separates what each page says from what we concluded. A cell marked "None shown" means the pages we opened did not show the feature; it does not prove the product lacks it. Our own role is not in this table. It sits above your management system and the review vendor, as described in the workflow section below.

What the pricing shows

Pricing checked October 19, 2026. PetScreening, OurPetPolicy, and Findigs publish no prices for their review products, so we list them as Quote-based. Rentec Direct, Buildium, and DoorLoop publish plan prices, but none of the three publishes a price for assistance animal review.

Starter plan list price: $25 per month according to Rentec Direct (2026). Rentec's Starter plan covers up to 10 properties and tenants, its Pro plan starts at $50 a month and scales with units, and the company offers a two-week free trial with no setup fees.

Buildium's Essential plan costs $62 a month and its Growth plan starts at $192 a month, according to Buildium (2026). Its pricing page mentions no pet features.

DoorLoop's One plan costs $2.50 per unit a month with a $199 monthly minimum, and its Connect plan costs $4.00 per unit with a $299 minimum, according to DoorLoop (2026).

Applicant-paid pet screening: $25 per pet according to Rentec Direct (2025). The help article dates these fees to October 14, 2025, and says assistance animal accommodation requests cost renters $0.

PetScreening's assistance animal page says an individual pays nothing to submit a request and publishes no landlord price, according to PetScreening (2026). Findigs says it prices each quote against units and platform pillars, and its pricing page at findigs.com/pricing lists no dollar amounts. OurPetPolicy's pricing page names a Standard Plan and a Pro Plan and asks visitors to request pricing, without showing amounts, at ourpetpolicy.com/pricing.

The table below applies only the published starting prices to an illustrative 10-unit and 40-unit portfolio. It is arithmetic on public rates, not a quote.

Worked example, with illustrative inputs rather than a customer case: suppose an owner receives 6 assistance animal requests a month and spends 65 minutes on each, which totals 390 minutes, or 6.5 hours of staff time. At an assumed $30 an hour in loaded staff cost, that work costs $195 a month. If a review service removed 20 minutes from each request, the saving would be 120 minutes, or 2 hours, worth $60 a month. A quote-based tool that costs more than $60 a month cannot pay for itself on time saved alone at these inputs, so the case has to rest on fewer errors and documented decisions. If the intake log sits in Buildium, its webhook subscriptions use event names such as Applicant.Created, which we did not test but which show the kind of timestamped trigger a hand-off step could read.

Vendor profiles, one by one

Each profile separates the best fit, the limitations, the implementation steps, and the evidence we could check.

PetScreening

Best fit: landlords who want an outside team to review assistance animal requests and send a recommendation to both the requester and the property manager. The company's assistance animal page says an in-house review team checks each request against HUD and Fair Housing Act guidance, contacts each health care provider to confirm the documentation is authentic, and lets managers restrict company users' access to confidential health documents. If fake documents are found, the request is denied, but the interactive process continues.

Limitations: no landlord price is published, and the page directs visitors to a demo. The same assistance animal page shows two review totals, "over 1 million" and "165k," which are inconsistent, according to PetScreening (2026). Ask how the count is calculated. Its Trustpilot profile shows a score below four stars: Review score: 3.2 TrustScore from 1,277 reviews according to Trustpilot (2026).

Implementation: first, accept requests through any channel and never require the requester to use PetScreening's portal, because the vendor review is optional back-office help that the requester never has to use. Then request a written price and confirm which of the listed property management integrations matches your system. Find out whether the connection sends health documents into your system or leaves them in PetScreening's portal, and who on your staff can open them. Agree in writing who receives the recommendation and how you will respond to the requester.

OurPetPolicy

Best fit: operators who want ESA verification and animal records in one place. The vendor describes its scope as apartment, single-family rental, and manufactured housing properties, and its pet records include vaccination tracking and incident logs. OurPetPolicy raised an $8 million Series A on January 14, 2026, according to Pulse 2 (2026), and the company says it takes on liability for its ESA determinations.

Limitations: pricing is not published, and the company says the new funding will go toward expanding software integrations. Confirm your system connection today rather than on a roadmap. Its verification and liability claims are vendor statements we could not check independently, and we could not open its Capterra review page to test them.

Implementation: request a written quote, ask for the liability terms in the contract, define your ESA intake steps, and decide where animal records and health documents are stored and who can open them.

Findigs

Best fit: operators who already screen applicants with Findigs and want pet and assistance animal validation in the same application flow. Its blog says in-house specialists review ESA letters as part of the rental application. As the Findigs guide notes, a landlord cannot require a specific form, notarized statements, or statements under penalty of perjury, which is a useful check on any intake form you draft.

Limitations: Findigs prices quotes against units and platform pillars, and its pricing page does not say whether the manager or the applicant pays for assistance animal validation. Its decision-time figure is vendor-reported and covers application types generally, not assistance animal requests: Vendor-reported decision time: 3.4-hour median according to Findigs (undated vendor blog).

Implementation: confirm whether validation is included in your screening tier, get the applicant-fee terms in writing, and set your own response-time target instead of relying on the vendor's median.

Rentec Direct

Best fit: small landlords who already run Rentec Direct and want a pet-screening link on applications. Rentec does not run the assistance animal review. Its help article says PetScreening teams distinguish pets, emotional support animals, and service animals, and Rentec's job is to switch the pet-screening setting on or off.

Limitations: Rentec does not handle the ESA decision, and its Starter plan covers only up to 10 properties and tenants. If you need the request and the review decision in one place, Rentec alone does not provide it.

Implementation: in Settings, under Program and then Rental Applications, the help article describes setting "Ask primary applicant to list pets?" to YES or NO. Make sure no pet screening is queued against an assistance animal request, whichever option you choose.

Buildium

Best fit: operators who need a general system for leases, rent, and maintenance, and who want starting prices in writing. Limitations: the pricing page does not mention pet screening or pet policies. Its named partners cover tenant screening, renters insurance, eSignature, and inspections, so an assistance animal review would sit outside the system. Its pricing page mentions an Open API only in general terms, so confirm the endpoints before you design around them.

Implementation: plan a manual or API-based hand-off for each request, and record the outcome in the lease file. If you need the request and the review decision in one system, the pricing page does not show a pet module that does that.

DoorLoop

Best fit: owners who want rent collection, accounting, and tenant screening in one tool. Limitations: the visible pricing content does not mention pet features, assistance animals, or a PetScreening integration. The lower sections of the page were truncated in our review, so check the full pricing page and product tour before you rule DoorLoop in or out.

Implementation: if you pick DoorLoop, run the assistance animal review outside it and decide who records the decision and where.

Where the handoffs break, and how a workflow layer fits

The pain usually sits in the handoffs. A request arrives by email or a portal, someone copies it into a vendor form, the vendor's answer lands in an inbox, and the decision date slips. A workflow layer can close those gaps without replacing the review vendor. US Tech Automations can be configured to sit above your management system and the review vendor. The two workflows below are proposed designs, not a description of a live deployment.

Proposed workflow one covers intake. The trigger is a new accommodation request in your system or shared inbox. The action creates one request record with the date received, the animal type the requester named, the review vendor you chose, and a due-date reminder. The output is a task for a named reviewer, plus a flag that stops any pet screening or pet fee from being queued against the request, which is the rule DREDF describes. The prerequisites are API or scheduled export access to your management system, confirmed endpoints, and a restricted folder for health documents. The human review point is the reviewer reading the documents and making the decision. The workflow never denies a request.

Proposed workflow two covers the vendor's answer. The trigger is the review vendor's recommendation or document request, delivered by email, export, or webhook if the vendor offers one. The action writes the status to the request record, notifies the decision-maker, and starts the clock on any follow-up the vendor asks for. The output is a dated note in the record and a reminder. The prerequisite is a confirmed delivery format in writing before anything is built. The human review point is that the decision and any written reply to the requester go out under a person's name, not automatically.

Building it yourself in Zapier, Make, or n8n

Zapier, Make, and n8n can build the same intake and status steps, and a fair comparison has to start there. When configured, they keep run histories, retry failed steps, branch on errors, and can produce audit evidence. What you still own is observability, meaning noticing a run that failed silently; idempotency, so a retried run does not open two tasks for one request; escalation, so someone gets the request when the reviewer is out; access controls on health documents; and maintenance when your management system changes its API. For a team without a developer, that ownership is usually the real cost, more than the subscription.

A proposed US Tech Automations design would configure the same run history, retries, error branches, and escalation rules, with the prerequisites and review points written down before the build starts. It still requires API or export access, a written list of who can open health documents, and a named person for every accommodation decision. If your team can own those five things in-house, a no-code build is a reasonable choice.

Common mistakes

• Charging a pet fee or running pet screening on an assistance animal request. DREDF says landlords cannot require pet screening for assistance animals.

• Treating the review vendor's recommendation as the final decision. The housing provider makes the decision, and the record should show who made it.

• Asking for a diagnosis or full medical records. A housing provider generally is not entitled to the diagnosis.

• Buying a review service without a written per-unit or per-plan price, which makes the true cost impossible to compare.

• Assuming the 2026 federal change ends your obligations. State and local law still applies, and private suits remain available.

Decision checklist

• Does the vendor give a written per-unit or per-plan price before you sign?

• Does the vendor keep pet screening and pet fees off assistance animal requests?

• Can you restrict who sees health documents, and can you show who opened them?

• Does the integration cover your management system today, not on a roadmap?

• Is a named person responsible for receiving each recommendation and responding in time?

• Has your attorney checked the intake standard against your state and local rules, including that no requester is required to use a vendor portal?

Who should pick which tool

On the criteria above, PetScreening leads on review workflow and on the integration list, but its price is unpublished and its review totals conflict. OurPetPolicy leads on records and is the closest alternative. Get a written price from each, then compare them on the same checklist.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip a custom workflow when the review vendor already covers your intake and you receive only a few requests a year, since a shared inbox and a written checklist do that job. Skip it when your management system gives no API or export access and you will not change that, because the workflow would have nothing to read. Skip it when you want one vendor to make and document the accommodation decision, because the review service already does that.

If you are still choosing the management system underneath, see our best property management software for small landlords and our AppFolio alternatives guide. If you also want to ask tenants for online reviews, which is a separate job from accommodation work, see our review request software guide.

Questions landlords ask

Can I require pet screening for an assistance animal?

No. Landlords cannot require pet screening for assistance animals, and DREDF describes requiring it as a fair housing violation.

Do I need a diagnosis or medical records to approve an assistance animal?

Generally no. A housing provider is generally not entitled to the diagnosis, and it can ask for documentation of a disability and a disability-related need from a licensed provider who has personal knowledge of the requester.

Did the 2026 HUD change end emotional support animal requests?

No. The federal enforcement standard narrowed, but state and local laws and private lawsuits are unaffected, so your written intake policy still matters.

Is Rentec Direct enough to handle these requests on its own?

No. Rentec turns on the pet-screening links, and PetScreening's teams do the review, so you still need a review process for assistance animal requests.

Is PetScreening free for landlords?

Its assistance animal page publishes no landlord price and says an individual pays nothing to submit a request. Get a written quote before you rely on any cost assumption.

Why are three of the six products listed as quote-based?

Their pages publish no dollar amounts for the review product. Findigs prices against units and platform pillars, and OurPetPolicy shows a Standard Plan and a Pro Plan with no amounts, so each needs a written quote.

The short version

Buy the review as a service and keep your management system for leases and rent. Shortlist PetScreening and OurPetPolicy, get a written price from each, and confirm the integration with your system before you sign. Keep pet screening and pet fees off every assistance animal request, and keep the accommodation decision with a named person. To see how a proposed intake and status workflow would be configured, see how US Tech Automations configures this.