Rachel Tan

Rachel's journey into pet-friendly property rental started with her own struggle. She'd adopted a rescue dog — a golden retriever mix named Jasper — and couldn't find decent housing that would allow him. She was working as a property consultant at the time, and that personal frustration sparked something.

"I was handling dozens of rental transactions, but pet owners weren't on my radar," she says. "I didn't get it until I was one of them." That shift changed everything. She spent the next three years at a boutique pet-friendly real estate firm in Katong, learning the specific challenges pet owners face and how landlords think about risk.

When she joined Paws & Dwellings Pte Ltd in 2019, Rachel brought that ground-level knowledge plus formal education — a degree in Real Estate Management from the National University of Singapore. But the real expertise comes from doing the work. She's negotiated over 150 pet-friendly rental transactions. She's sat with anxious dog owners trying to understand their lease terms. She's also listened to landlords concerned about property damage and liability.

What drives her is bridging that gap. Most landlords aren't anti-pet out of cruelty — they're cautious because they don't know what they don't know. Most pet owners don't understand why certain deposits exist or how to talk about modifications. Rachel's job is translating between both worlds. And she's particularly focused on East Coast and Siglap because those neighborhoods represent a sweet spot — growing pet ownership, diverse rental stock, and landlords who are often more flexible than in other districts.

Her white papers on pet deposit trends and lease modifications have become go-to resources for property agents across Singapore. But she's most proud of the conversations she's enabled — between landlords and tenants who might otherwise never have found common ground.