The most contentious square footage in American housing isn't the kitchen or the bathroom. It's the space occupied by a tenant's animal, especially when that animal's legal status is a matter of dispute. For landlords, navigating the tangle of pet fees, damage deposits, and federal protections for emotional support and service animals is a high-stakes game of liability. For the Miller brothers in Boise, Idaho, it looked like a software problem.
OurPetPolicy, founded in 2021 by Logan and Cody Miller, sells a SaaS platform to property managers and owners. Its core function is to systematize the chaos: registering pets, tracking incidents like bites or damage, and, most critically, verifying documentation for assistance animals. The company's recent $8 million Series A, led by real estate tech specialist RET Ventures, is a bet that this niche administrative headache is ripe for automation at scale [Preqin, Jan 2026].
The Wedge of Legal Verification
The company's entry point is the legally sensitive and often murky process of handling Emotional Support Animal (ESA) and service animal requests. Under the Fair Housing Act, landlords must provide reasonable accommodation for assistance animals, even in no-pet buildings. This has led to a cottage industry of online ESA letter mills, creating a compliance minefield for property owners. OurPetPolicy positions its "lawyer-vetted ESA verification system" as a shield, offering a standardized workflow to review documentation and, in its words, "identify unauthorized animals and fraudulent ESA and Service Animal requests" [Software Advice, 2026].
Founders and Team
The founding team brings an unconventional blend of experience to the proptech table.
- Logan Miller, Co-Founder. Prior to OurPetPolicy, Miller was a working actor, with roles in films like Escape Room and Touching Home [The New York Times, 2010; The New York Times, 2019]. His LinkedIn bio states he founded the company "with a mission to establish the authenticity of ESA letters" [LinkedIn].
- Cody Miller, Co-Founder. Cody serves as Co-CEO and General Counsel at Dale Operating Co., a real estate investment firm, bringing legal and operational expertise in property management to the partnership [Bloomberg, 2026].
The Competitive and Reputational Tightrope
| Company | Known Focus | Key Differentiator (Claimed) |
|---|---|---|
| OurPetPolicy | Pet & ESA management for landlords | "Lawyer-vetted" verification, incident tracking, tenant curriculum [Software Advice, 2026; OurPetPolicy, 2026] |
| PetScreening | Pet & assistance animal risk assessment | Focus on a standardized "FIDO" score for pets, extensive integration list |
A more immediate challenge may be reputational. The business model inherently places the company as an agent of the property owner, a position that can lead to friction with tenants. The Better Business Bureau profile for OurPetPolicy shows consumer complaints, and discussions on forums like Reddit's r/EmotionalSupportDogs include allegations from tenants who feel the service wrongfully denied valid accommodation requests or imposed pet fees on ESAs [BBB; Reddit /r/EmotionalSupportDogs, May 2024].
The Road from Niche to Necessity
With new capital, the company's stated plan is to deepen integrations with major property management systems, expand its go-to-market team, and enhance fraud detection [Preqin, Jan 2026]. The playbook is classic vertical SaaS: become the embedded, indispensable workflow for a specific, painful process. The potential market is vast, there are an estimated 45 million rental units in the U.S., and a significant portion of them will house an animal at some point [OurPetPolicy, 2026].