Plano residents don’t have to be pet owners to get a sense of just how nutty Americans are about our animals. Just a few minutes of watching TV will do it. After you’ve been bombarded with the images of happy/sad/exuberant/listless cats and dogs who are saved/rewarded by the pet products in the commercials, you won’t doubt that $60.59 billion is being spent on pets this year. It becomes clear how Fido and Kitty can afford to foot the bill for so much of today’s prime time television.

Another fact—one that directly relates to Plano real estate—is that slightly more than 56% of all American households are said to include a pet. The ASPCA says that 37%-47% of households have a dog, and 30%-37% of households have a cat (as far as the cats are concerned, it’s the cats that have the households, not the other way around). Whether or not Fido and Kitty are part of your own family, this does give rise to how important the real estate concept of “pet-friendly” homes has become.

Does your finicky cat need a room of his or her own? Does your MegaDog require a large yard? Space is always a leading qualification when you go to assess minimum real estate requirements for your Plano family, but since 68% of families include pet needs in their calculations, that is one of the basics that qualify a property. That’s why it makes increasing sense to emphasize pet-friendliness. For instance, if the back yard has a low or not very restrictive fence, a proactive seller might research the cost of installing an invisible fence. Even if they don’t go ahead and actually put it in, having a bid in hand showing that the cost is reasonable could be enough to sooth pet-owning prospects’ concerns.

Although pet owners are unambiguous about considering the four-footers to be family members, that’s not a universally shared concept. If you don’t see (or hear) any signs of pets in a prospective neighborhood, buyers should make certain that a property they are thinking about buying doesn’t carry restrictions that could cause pet turmoil. Local ordinances and neighborhood associations can enforce restrictions on the number and kind of pets.

Along with the growing popularity of pets have come a number of pet perks that have real estate implications. Pet amenities like dog parks are becoming more and more common in newer communities (in some areas, a movement is afoot to feature dog- and even cat-friendly cafes and public buildings).

With Plano's housing news behaving pretty much in line with the rest of the nation’s—that is, exactly as expected for a brisk spring selling season—you don’t usually expect to see much eye-catching housing news in the national press. That’s why last week’s USA Today Money section’s front page story was interesting. Inside, there was more, too. Tucked inside the same section was “THE WEEK AHEAD” which provided a day-by-day schedule about imminent housing news releases—a welcome heads-up for any devoted Plano housing news observer. I’ll get back to how that wound up working out later...

The lead housing news item, headlined “AS RENT GOES UP, SO MAY HOUSING MARKET,” centered on the sort of shift that can wind up being indicative of something: for the first time in at least five years, they found “a milestone that should spur the sluggish home-buying market.”

That milestone was a rise in U.S. median rent prices, which climbed 4% from a year earlier—the most robust increase since March 2013. A little less firm was what the ‘something’ that this indicated, but the balance of opinion seems to be that the climbing rent number will prod more renters into buying a place of their own. This seems a reasonable enough takeaway, and it’s one that is supported by history. Underlying that conclusion is another contributing factor: “multifamily construction fell off a cliff after the…financial crisis in the late 2000s…”, so the tightening availability of rentals also factors in.

The item ends with a slightly contrary (and logical) point: rising rents means it will be tougher for tenants to save up for down payments, all the more because rents are now rising faster than wages.

That earlier-mentioned “THE WEEK AHEAD” article on the second page had a list of real estate news reports that were scheduled to be released last week. It was headlined, “Data may point to warmth,” and was indeed more real estate news (rather than a weather update). But the optimism about warm spring weather possibly pointing to a rise in home builder sentiment was slightly chilled when the actual report came out: sentiment dropped two points in May.

Housing starts data were scheduled to be released on Tuesday—and this one turned out to be GREAT! The Census Bureau “surprised the market” with the strongest monthly report for starts and permits in 7 ½ years—soaring 20+% in April (with single family housing up 16% from March). So, one has to wonder: if home builders are less optimistic than predicted, why are they breaking out the hammers and saws so energetically? The housingwire.com website thought it represented a rebound from “weather-depressed” previous numbers…so maybe the “Data may point to warmth” headline had been right, after all.

The rest of the real estate news releases for the week were less interesting because they centered on reaction to the Federal Reserve’s release of the minutes of their meeting, which (let’s face it) are traditionally confusingly vague. But the week was slated to end with Friday’s Labor Department release of consumer prices, as indeed it did: price rises slowed to 0.1% from the 0.2% in March. Good news, also. All in all, Plano readers had to come away from the spate of housing news with a considerably warmer feeling than they’d had for much of the winter.