The top 10 dog-friendly commuter towns to rent with your pup outside London

With the highest number of green spaces and dog-friendly pubs, Reading came 1st, followed by Watford and Maidenhead, which has the highest percentage of pet-friendly rental properties (21.74%).

1. Reading
2. Watford
3. Maidenhead
4. Woking
5. High Wycombe
6. Chorleywood
7. Hitchin
8. Stevenage
9. Gravesend
10. Esher

With interest in properties outside the city rising by 126% in June and July and searches for buying a puppy climbing by over 150% since March, people’s property priorities have completely shifted thanks to the lockdown.

Worst commuter towns for dog owners

1. Shenfield
2. Waltham Cross
3. Gerrards Cross
4. Cheshunt
5. Walton-on-Thames
6. Hemel Hempstead
7. Hatfield
8. Bushey
9. Potters Bar
10. Beaconsfield

With no green spaces or dog-friendly pubs of its own, Shenfield ranked the worst on our list, followed by Waltham Cross and Gerrards Cross, where less than 1% of rentals consider pets.

The overall percentage of rental properties in all the towns surveyed which consider pets was an abysmal 3.78%, showing that, although there are some places more considerate of pets, it’s still difficult for dog-owners to find suitable properties.

Comment from Warrick Swift, commercial manager of InventoryBase

“Pet-friendly rentals have always been hard to come by but, with so many people reconsidering their priorities in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown, we could be about to see a change in attitudes from property providers to reflect the needs of their prospective renters. Renters have a deeper understanding of what makes a home now that landlords might be able to capitalise on.”

Methodology: We used data from Zoopla, Doggiepubs.co.uk and TripAdvisor to assess all the commuter hotspots with a travel time of 30 minutes or less in TotallyMoney’s commuter town ranking.