A section with key insights from State of Pet Adoption Platform Insights 2026
10. What role does location play in adoption?
What last year's report found
The 2025 report found that most people looking to adopt live in cities, while a larger share of pets needing homes are in regional and rural areas. It also found that some organisations based in small towns list many of their animals in cities and regional centres, because their foster carer networks stretch across the state or even interstate. These transport and foster pathways give animals from small communities access to more potential adopters, but the report noted that moving animals between communities must be done mindfully, so that each animal is healthy and able to thrive in its new environment.
Step 1: People wanting to adopt and pets needing homes are not in the same places
The table below shows where four different groups of people were located, using the Modified Monash Model.
The Modified Monash Model (MMM) is an Australian Government classification of how remote a location is. It ranges from major cities (MM 1) through regional and rural areas (MM 2–5) to remote and very remote communities (MM 6–7).
About three in four people enquiring (73.4%) about available pets on petrescue.com.au were in metropolitan areas. Pets listed for adoption were spread further out: 65.8% were in metropolitan areas and 30.1% in regional and rural areas. Guardians asking PetRescue for support were the most city-based group of all (79.1% of Tailored Pet Support requests and 80.5% of Home2Home cases).
Step 2: Where an organisation is based is not always where its animals are
PetRescue records two locations for each listing: where the organisation is based, and where the pet actually is, usually in a foster home. These are not always the same place. A Rescue may be based in a small regional town while many of the animals it lists live with foster carers in a city.
As last year, the data shows animals moving from rural areas towards larger population centres, where there are more potential adopters. About 2,700 more pets were located in metropolitan areas than were listed by organisations based there, and about 450 more in regional centres. Medium and small rural towns each had about 1,000 fewer animals than their organisations listed.
Step 3: Why this matters
Moving animals to where adopters are can be a vital pathway, particularly for animals from small communities with few local adopters. But it does not fix every mismatch. The animals who need homes are not always the animals most city adopters are looking for. Last year's report found that many rescue dogs are medium and large working or bull-breed types, while metropolitan demand is strongest for small dogs, in a housing market where space and rental rules limit choices. An animal moved to a city may reach more potential adopters, but still not be well suited to most city homes.
So the mismatch works at several levels:
- where organisations are based
- where animals are located
- where potential adopters live
- the animals available in the location are not always the ones those adopters are looking for
Read about the Foster Carers Changing Lives, One Pet at a Time
Does socio-economic disadvantage affect a pet's chances of adoption?
Socio-economic advantage and disadvantage is measured here using the Australian Bureau of Statistics' SEIFA Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD). IRSAD ranks every area in Australia using Census information such as income, education, employment and housing.
Areas are grouped into ten deciles: decile 1 is the 10% least advantaged and most disadvantaged areas, and decile 10 is the 10% most advantaged and least disadvantaged.
What last year's report found
The 2025 report looked at socio-economic advantage in two ways: by the postcode where each member organisation is based, and by the postcode where each listed pet is located, which is usually a foster carer's home.
🏠 Where organisations are based. Member organisations were spread fairly evenly across the scale, with a slight lean towards less advantaged areas (301 members in deciles 1–5, compared with 286 in deciles 6–10). This lean was strongest for Councils and, to a lesser extent, NFP Shelters. Vet Clinics were more often in advantaged areas, and Rescues were spread almost evenly.
🐾Where the animals are. Listing locations largely matched the locations of their organisations, showing that most rescue work happens locally. But listed animals, and the number of animals per member organisation, were concentrated in deciles 2 to 6. This means most foster care, and most of the work done by a largely volunteer workforce, is taking place in less advantaged communities.
📍Where adopters are. People looking to adopt through PetRescue were concentrated in more advantaged, metropolitan areas: 46% of adopter accounts were in metropolitan areas in deciles 7 to 10. Together, these findings point to a net movement of pets from less advantaged communities into more advantaged ones, a pattern also seen in the USA.
What happened this year
This year's data confirms last year's picture of where rescue work happens, and adds a new question: does the area an animal is in affect its chance of being adopted?
Finding 1: Rescue work is still local
As last year, listed pets were located in much the same kinds of areas as the organisations caring for them. When listings are grouped by IRSAD decile, the pattern by animal location and by organisation location differs by no more than 2.0pp in any decile.
So although animals do move between places (Step 2), that movement is mainly from rural to city areas. It is not a movement into more advantaged or less advantaged areas than the ones their organisations are in.
Finding 2: Capacity to rehome is thinnest at both ends of the scale
Last year's report found the heaviest rescue workload in deciles 2 to 6. This year, organisations in the middle of the scale again listed the most animals each: between 87 and 114 per organisation in deciles 3 to 9. Organisations at both ends listed far fewer: 67 and 60 each in deciles 1 and 2, and only 46 in decile 10.
Looking at this by organisation postcode, the two most disadvantaged deciles are home to 18.4% of organisations that listed animals, but those organisations listed only 11.5% of all animals. There are plenty of organisations working in these communities, but each has less capacity to rehome animals.
Across all deciles, 190 of the 726 active member organisations did not list any animals in 2025–26. This ranged from 19% of organisations in decile 2 to 33% in decile 10.
Finding 3: Animals at both ends of the socio-economic scale are less likely to be adopted, and both gaps widened this year
The table below compares the adoption rate for animals located in each group of deciles with the national adoption rate.
That is a real, if modest, finding indicating that pets located in the lowest socio-economic areas are increasingly less likely to be adopted.
🟠 Deciles 1–2 (most disadvantaged): 2.0pp below the national rate in 2024–25, widening to 3.5pp below in 2025–26.
⚪ Deciles 3–9: slightly above the national rate (+0.7pp, then +1.8pp).
🟠 Decile 10 (most advantaged): 3.2pp below the national rate in 2024–25, widening to 13.1pp below in 2025–26.
Why the decile 10 result needs context
The decile 10 result needs careful reading. About 4 of its 13 percentage points come from just two postcodes, each dominated by a single program. In one, a dog rehoming program placed 94 of 196 dogs, with a median time to adoption of 81 days. In the other, an other-pet program placed 7 of 183 listings.
But even without those two postcodes, decile 10 would still sit about 9pp below the national rate, so there is a real finding underneath. This result may seem surprising, given that people looking to adopt are concentrated in more advantaged areas. It suggests the decile 10 gap reflects the kinds of organisations and programs listing animals in these areas, rather than a lack of interest from adopters nearby. Vet Clinics make up 25.3% of member organisations in decile 10, compared with 4.0% in decile 1, and only one Council is a listing member in decile 10. Last year's report found that Vet Clinics generally have slower adoptions than other member types.
Rescue work remains concentrated in less advantaged communities, while adopters are concentrated in more advantaged ones. Organisations at both ends of the socio-economic scale have the least capacity each to rehome animals, and the pets located there are less likely to be adopted than the national average. In the most disadvantaged areas, the gap is modest but widening. In the most advantaged areas, the gap is larger, and is partly explained by a small number of specialist programs and a higher share of Vet Clinics among listing organisations.
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