Buying a House With Pets: What I Never Thought to Check

Buying a House With Pets: What I Never Thought to Check

Host: Amy Castro

Guest: None (Solo Episode)

Summary: Amy shares what she is learning while searching for a new home with three dogs and three cats in mind, including the practical safety, mobility, layout, climate, and cost issues that listing photos rarely reveal.

Links: No outside links are specifically mentioned in this episode.

Recommended Resources: Your veterinarian, a qualified home inspector, and local emergency veterinary resources in the area where you plan to live.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some links may be affiliate links. If you choose to buy, I may receive a small thank-you at no extra cost to you. It helps keep the show going.

Veterinary Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional veterinary advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Transcript Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for readability while preserving the meaning and conversational style of the recorded episode.

CHAPTERS

00:01  Why house hunting changes when pets get a vote

00:47  The pet checklist I started with

03:01  Fences, usable yards, and nearby roads

07:28  Stairs, flooring, and safe movement

12:14  Heating, cooling, lead paint, and hidden costs

16:39  Basements, layout, land, wildlife, and weather

23:40  Veterinary access and choosing what works every day

TRANSCRIPT

Amy Castro (00:01.058)
I thought buying a house with pets meant finding enough space, a decent yard, and hopefully a fence. Then I actually started looking at houses. Now I'm checking how close the road is, whether Gunny can handle the stairs, and whether my blind cat's gonna fall right through. Apparently my pets have turned me into a very different kind of homebuyer.

Amy Castro (00:23.438)
You've reached the pet parent hotline, your lifeline to practical solutions for your toughest pet parenting challenges. I'm your host, Amy Castro, and I'm here to help you cut through the noise and turn expert advice into step-by-step strategies so you can stop chasing your tail and start enjoying life with pets again.

Amy Castro (00:47.064)
When I first started house-hunting, I had the same kind of list that most people probably had. I had a budget. Well, I was gonna say I had a general area I wanted to live in, but it consisted of two states, so that's probably not narrow enough. I knew I wanted some land, reasonable property taxes, and enough room that I didn't feel like I was living on top of everybody else. And when I thought about my pets, I kind of assumed their needs were pretty straightforward. I've got three dogs, so I need a yard. I have three cats, so I need enough room for litter boxes and places where they can get away from the dogs. And that was about the extent of my pet-related planning. But once I started walking through houses, I realized the pets affect almost every part of the home buying decision. And I'm not talking about designing some elaborate pet palace where everybody has a private bedroom and the dogs have their own swimming pool. I'm talking about, you know, ordinary life. Can I let dogs outside without turning it into a major operation? Can Gunny get in and out of the house safely? Can the cats move around without me constantly worrying that one of them is gonna fall or get trapped somewhere or slip out a door? And those questions really started changing how I saw the houses. A home could look really great online and have the right amount of square footage and check most of the boxes I'd originally created. Then I'd get there and I'd realize the front door was much closer to the road than the pictures made it seem, or I'd walk inside and see a beautiful open staircase that would probably be a terrible idea for my blind cat, or I would discover that the yard was large but not really usable for the dogs without spending a lot of money first. And that's probably the biggest thing this process has taught me so far. The feature itself doesn't tell you whether the house works. A big yard sounds good, stairs might not sound like a big concern, and an older house might look really charming, but once you put your actual pets in the picture, the meaning of those things changes. The fencing issue was one of the first surprises. I knew I wanted a fenced yard, that part wasn't new. What surprised me was how many homes I've seen in the Northeast that don't have fencing at all in the backyard or anywhere, really. And I'm not talking about small lots or tightly packed neighborhoods. I've looked at homes with an acre, two acres, seven acres, and still there was no kind of fencing for pets.

Amy Castro (03:01.015)
Some of these places clearly have dogs living there, but yet there's no fenced area anywhere. And that's been a real adjustment for me because I'm used to thinking of fencing as kind of a basic part of having a home and a basic part of managing dogs. I don't want to put three dogs on leashes every single time somebody needs to go outside. I especially don't want to do that in the early morning, late at night, in the rain, or when it's snowing. I also don't want every bathroom break to require me to get fully dressed up and ready like I was going out on the town. So I'll look at houses and I'll think, you know, that yard is beautiful. There's plenty of room. We can just add a fence. But we can just add a fence can turn into a very expensive sentence. The land could be uneven, there may be trees, rocks, or drainage issues. I'm not looking in neighborhoods that have restrictions, but you might be as to what type of fence or whether you can put up a fence at all. and then there's property boundaries that might not be where they seem. part of the yard that would make sense to fence may not even be near the door that the dogs would actually use. And that's one I'm struggling with right now with the house I'm really interested in. And I don't necessarily need to fence several acres. The dogs don't require their own nature preserve. But I do need a practical safe section where they can go outside without every trip becoming a production. And so that means As I'm looking, that I'm no longer impressed simply because a house has acreage, I'm looking at whether the land actually works for us. Sometimes a smaller yard near the right door is more useful than several beautiful acres behind the house. And fencing led me to another issue I hadn't really considered enough, which is the road. Listing photos are obviously taken to optimize a house and make it look set back and very, very private. Then you get to the house and you realize the front door is much closer to the traffic than you expected. Especially looking here in New England where houses are in the same spot they've been for hundreds of years, and maybe they were set up when roads were simple paths, but now they're two lanes and the front door of the house is literally steps from the street. The other thing to consider is that the road may not even look busy while you're standing there for a thirty minute showing.

Amy Castro (05:11.161)
But then you notice the speed of the cars that do pass, or you realize that the house sits on a blind curve, or you see that there's no shoulder, so no walking the dogs from the house, or at least not doing that safely. And even with rural roads, they can look really, really peaceful and still be dangerous because people tend to drive really fast. And that's really made me think about the little mistakes that can happen even when you're careful. You know, you come in carrying groceries, a delivery person opens a gate. You drop a leash, whatever the case may be. And although we don't expect those things to happen, I do know that no one manages pets perfectly every single day. So now I'm asking myself how much room there really is for a mistake. If one of the dogs gets out, is she running into another yard or is she running into the road almost immediately? And that doesn't mean that I can only buy a house on a completely isolated property at the end of a mile long driveway. What it means is that the road matters more to me than I thought it would, and that was kind of an interesting surprise. I used to look at the distance between houses as being really, really important and being set back from the road as being part of the appearance of the property or an aesthetic, but now I see it as reaction time. A little more distance may give me a chance to stop a dog, grab a dog, grab a leash. A little less traffic might make it easier to recover from a mistake. And those are things I didn't think I would be evaluating when I started this. The stairs, that's been not only a huge challenge for me, because it's literally been months or years since I've had to climb up a flight of stairs. There were two steps going into my house in Texas, and that was about the extent of my stair climbing. Here, everything's two-story. Well, not everything, but a lot of things are two-story, and there's a lot of stairs. And when you're looking at older homes like colonial era homes, Those stairs were small, narrow, and very, very steep. And I did know, obviously, that stairs can be harder for an older pet. Gunny, for example, is getting older and she's a bulldog. She's not suddenly going to become lighter, faster, or more graceful as time goes on. So when I see a house where she would need to climb a full flight of stairs every time she went outside or to bed at night, I have to think beyond whether we could make it work for today, because we probably could.

Amy Castro (07:28.568)
The question is whether I want to build our daily routine around something that may become harder for her later. And that's also made me look very differently at multi-level homes. Before this process, I kind of thought, well, it's just a few steps, no big deal. But in some of these houses, it's a few steps everywhere. And like I said, narrow, steep. And so for a person, you know, you might get into better shape. And doing that, I'm hoping I do. But when it comes to an older dog doing it several times a day, that could be very, very different. And then comes the stairs themselves. I think the surface matters. Like I said, the steepness matters, the width. You know, can you walk up side by side with your pet, or are they gonna have to walk in front of you or behind you, which could be dangerous, especially in front of you? And some steps that I've come across are very, very slippery in addition to being narrow or have awkward turns that are not only Awkward for me, but really could be awkward for a dog who is losing their strength or balance. So now those are things that I pay much more attention to as I'm looking at houses. And what I didn't even think about when I started to look at staircases was looking at it through the perspective of my blind cat. And she is incredibly capable, right? She climbs things, she finds her way around. I mean that cat can chase a fly through the house and catch it. And she's really good at learning the layout of a space and probably handles a lot more things than people might assume that she could handle. But she can't see an opening where the back of the step should be. And I had never thought about this for her. I've come across several houses where especially going to the basement, and that's a new thing for us too, they have open riser stairs, which basically means there's a gap between each step towards the back that's wide open. And so if she was to fall through, she would fall from whatever height the stair was. You know, maybe it would be two feet, but if it was at the top of the stairs, you might be talking about falling the equivalent of a story, which is obviously very dangerous. And so now I've got this mental picture in my head of my blind cat putting a foot through that opening or misjudging where the step ends and down she goes. And, you know, maybe she would learn to use them and she might need to, or we might have to make some accommodations to them to make them safer. But that's really where I've started drawing a distinction between

Amy Castro (09:52.378)
You know, what are the problems I can solve? And this is something to consider for yourself. And what problems do you actually want to take on that challenge to solve? Because technically, a lot of things about a house can be changed. I mean, I can cover the back of the stairs, I can add panels to railings, I can put down runners, I can install gates. But, you know, if a house needs dozens of changes before you feel comfortable letting your pets move around, it may not be the right house for you. And I know that's what I'm looking at for us. And it isn't just the staircase, it's the landings, it's the railings and open spaces around them. Some houses have lofts or upstairs hallways that overlook the living room and they look beautiful in photos, but when you see the size of the gaps between the rails, you really start wondering whether one of your cats could squeeze through. And I can almost guarantee you that they could. And once you start looking at a house from the height of your cat, you notice things you never would have noticed. as a person. So now I'm finding myself looking at the floors, looking at the vents, looking at thresholds and bottoms of doors. And you know, real-estate agents are pointing out vaulted ceilings or molding and I'm staring at the gap between the basement steps. So keep that in mind if you're also house-hunting. And keep it in mind too, even if you're not house-hunting to buy, if you're just looking for some place to rent or someplace to live, or you're gonna be visiting somebody for a while with your pets. Definitely something to consider along the way. Flooring has also become a bigger consideration too, especially for gunny. You know, hardwood floors and tile can be beautiful, but they can also be slippery. And it might not be too bad for a younger dog, but definitely something to consider for an older dog and how they might struggle to get up or lose confidence if they're walking across a large open slippery area. You can add rugs, you can add runners and that's not a huge problem, but it definitely changes how you see the house and how you're gonna see the house. when it's covered with runners going every which way. And so instead of thinking, wow, these are really gorgeous floors, I'm also thinking about how many rugs I'm gonna need and whether I'm gonna spend every day straightening them because a dog has slid into one or even caused a tripping hazard. Then there are transitions from one room to another. Some older homes can have raised thresholds or even gaps or small changes in floor height. And you might not notice them as a person

Amy Castro (12:14.852)
But a blind cat or an older dog might notice them quite a bit. And this is where the pets have made me much less interested in how those floors look and much more interested in how easy they're gonna be to navigate. Because obviously we all want a home where everybody, including our four-leggers, can move around without feeling like they need to be supervised every single step. The heating and air conditioning system has also been new territory for me. I am used to central heat and air where the vents are in the ceiling and in the Northeast, I've been looking at houses that have things like radiators, baseboard heat, floor vents, boilers, window air conditioners, and all kinds of combinations. And none of those things are bad necessarily. I number one, just don't have a lot of experience living with them. So I'm kind of learning to look at how they might affect a room. But a radiator, for example, isn't just a heating system. It aesthetically takes up part of the wall. But it also could get very hot. And a cat may decide it's the greatest sleeping location ever created. Or a dog bed might not be able to sit where you would normally put it because of it. Or a pet could try to squeeze behind it. And those things could be manageable, but they're definitely different from what I'm used to. Same goes for floor vents. I've seen some that were pretty big and had pretty big openings that could swallow a paw, or even small ones where a toenail could get caught. And I think about how my cat's And my dogs are gonna navigate those spaces. And don't even get me started about how a pet mess, a hairball thrown up, an accident, what kind of chaos that might cause should it go down a heating vent. And the interesting thing is none of these things would have even been something that I would have thought about or would have even registered for me in other houses. I would have been looking at the size of the room, the windows, and where the furniture goes. Now I'm thinking about whether somebody's gonna puke down an air vent and I'm gonna have to smell that for the next 20 years. And along those same lines with heating and air conditioning, I knew that not every house would have central air, but I did not expect so many would have nothing or a couple of window units. And so I know obviously people have lived thousands of years without air conditioning.

Amy Castro (14:22.692)
But when you're thinking about your pets, for example, Gunny and her very, very short bulldog face, yeah, it's it's something to consider as to how you're going to keep your pet from overheating, for example, or cats who like to be kept warmer, how are you gonna keep them warm in all rooms of the house? And so it could be a pretty significant expense that needs to be included when you're considering the cost of a house. And I think that's kind of a running theme. throughout this house-hunting process that I have found is that a house could be within my price range, but then I start adding up the things it needs to work for us, like fence, cooling, rugs, gates, changes to stairs, and many, many of those things can really add up. So none of those necessarily rule out a house, but I think when you're doing your calculations as to how much is this house really going to cost me and is it really affordable? you really have to look at how much you're gonna have to take on to modify it for your pets comfort and safety. And I don't know about you, but one of the biggest reasons why I left my house in Texas is because it became a full-time project. And I am trying really hard not to buy a house that becomes another full-time project. And so I originally thought, wouldn't it be great? I'm going to New England. I'm gonna buy this two hundred year old house. And it's gonna have a lot of character and small rooms and nooks and crannies, and it's not gonna look like every other cookie cutter house in the neighborhood. But when you go in and you really start looking at them, they come with other things that I hadn't had to think about much before, including many of the things that I've already mentioned, but one that never even crossed my mind, and that is lead paint. You know, a lot of people don't think about lead paint unless you're thinking about safety and small children. However, if you're looking at a house that was built prior to nineteen seventy eight, and I have looked at houses that have been built from seventeen sixty to the current day. And in homes built prior to nineteen seventy-eight, lead paint may be present, and that is a concern not just for children, but for pets. Think about it. Pets spend their lives living close to the floor. They walk through dust, they lick their paws, they chew on doors and trim and windowsills.

Amy Castro (16:39.62)
And all of those could be potential sources of lead. So right now, if I'm looking at an older house and the paint is peeling, that matters. It's not as simple as, we'll scrape it and repaint it. And it doesn't mean that every older house is unsafe and it doesn't mean I'm ruling out every house built before a certain year, but it means I have to look at the condition of the house, not just how charming it is. You know, is the paint maintained? Are there areas where it's flaking or damaged? has it been tested for lead? Or has any remediation been done? And those are questions I didn't think I would be asking on behalf of myself, let alone on behalf of my animals. But here we are. Now I mentioned basements before, and basements have also become interesting in a completely different way. I thought, isn't this awesome, right? You come to a different part of the country that has basements. We don't have basements in Texas. Think of all that storage. And by the way, if that basement is not finished, it doesn't count in the square footage. So if you're buying a 1,500 square foot house with an unfinished basement, you could actually have 3,000 square feet of space. Sounds really awesome, right? And I agree, basements can be super useful. It gives you storage, it's probably where your laundry is gonna be, maybe a great place to put litter boxes, which I've seen a lot. But cats, as you know, if you've got cats, are exceptionally talented at finding openings that no human being ever noticed. So when walking into an unfinished basement, you've gotta be looking at ceilings, walls, utility areas. Are there gaps somebody could get to that you can't? Could a cat disappear into a wall? Does the basement door latch securely? Are there wires, pipes, or insulation that are hanging down or crawl space an animal could disappear into? You know, I don't wanna spend the first night in my new house tearing walls down because one of my cats found an opening five minutes after we arrived. And the last couple of things that I want to mention, because I think people do think about things like layout, that's important. The layout of a house matters not only for you, but also for your pets. For me, with six pets, I need to be able to separate animals when necessary. And that doesn't mean that they're all fighting or anything like that or have to have their own separate rooms, but it does mean that normal things happen. You know, somebody gets sick. We've got pets that need to eat separately, or a cat that needs a quiet room.

Amy Castro (19:00.714)
And although an open-concept home can be really, really gorgeous where everything just kind of flows into every other room and there are no doors and entryways are very, very large, it's great. You can it feels very bright and spacious, but it also can be very difficult to create safe boundaries in those cases. Like in my old house, I really struggled to put up gates in certain places because the openings were so wide. there may not be a place to keep your dog away from the front door without sticking them in a bedroom every time. the doorbell rings. And what I found with older houses is that they generally have more doors and clearly defined rooms, which may not look as modern, but they can be super useful when you're living with several animals. And this is one of those areas where what looks really awesome in a photo because it's bright and open may not be livable or work best for you in your daily life. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to picture a house on a normal day, not the day it was cleaned and staged for showing. It's coming inside with groceries when the dogs are excited or delivery person at the door or even better, you know, rain, mud, snow, leashes, towels, and is that coming in on your hardwood floors through the front door or in the back through a super cool mudroom where you can throw straight into the washing machine. I mean, I have really come to appreciate mudrooms, enclosed porches and little entry areas much, much more than I ever thought that I really would. And some of them look great and some of them are super utilitarian, not really glamorous, but they make a great buffer. And I want to talk about land itself. You know, if you're lucky enough that you have the opportunity to make a decision between having a certain size property, it's definitely something that you have to take into consideration when it comes to your pets. And it's something that goes way beyond fencing. So for example, ticks are a huge issue in the Northeast. And I'm not saying we didn't have ticks in Texas and that I didn't know what diseases that ticks carry. But it's so much more of an issue up here that I really have to consider, you know, do I want to be near a woodsy area? Do I want to have kind of a wild yard that doesn't need to be mowed? And some of the properties that I'm looking at are wooded and beautiful, and they have tall grass and things like that. And that's what makes them charming and appealing. But it's also exactly the kind of place where I need to think more about ticks and parasites and how am I going to prevent those on my pets and myself as I'm walking them through these places.

Amy Castro (21:27.48)
So the land itself is more than just about mortgages and taxes. It can really change your pet care routine. You know, the wildlife that has access to your yard can definitely impact your pet care routine. In Texas, we worried about things like coyotes and cougars and bobcats. In the Northeast, they actually have bears. And people have seen bears in their backyards. And I'm not trying to create some type of wildlife horror story. I know that most of these animals would actually prefer to avoid us, but their presence definitely affects how comfortable I am letting my little dog Tinky, for example, outside, or how I would design a fenced-in area. So something to take into consideration that, you know, more land, more space, more rural is just a different set of risks. And if you're not prepared to mitigate those risks, then maybe a smaller fenced yard on a quiet street. with a manicured yard would work better for you than five acres in the boonies. And the bottom line is there's not one perfect answer. It really depends on what problems you're willing to manage. And especially if you're making a major move, take into consideration the weather. One of the reasons I moved back to the Northeast is that I was tired of the heat and humidity in Texas. And I am looking forward to winter. But I'm looking at houses in warmer weather. So it's really, really important that I think about What is this house? What is this yard specifically? What is this driveway? What is this deck going to look like when it's under snow? When it's under ice? How am I gonna navigate those steps with my pets? And are my dogs even going to go out in the yard in the snow? So something to consider too, when you're touring a house, that your pets aren't going to be living there just when the weather is good. They're going to be living there when the weather is bad, whether it's rain, whether it's two feet of snow, and how are you going to make sure that their basic daily needs are being taken care of? Another thing to consider in this process, depending upon where you are looking to live, is where's the closest veterinary care. We've done many episodes, whether it's traveling with pets or just what to do in a pet emergency, do you know where your closest emergency vet is?

Amy Castro (23:40.408)
And so another thing to take into consideration when you're choosing a place to live is how far is it to get to the vet? How easy is it to get that special pet food that you normally buy at the natural pet food store, et cetera? So just one more thing to consider when it comes down to picking your next place for your entire family to live. And all of this has made the house-hunting process a little bit more complicated than I thought it was going to be. But I also think it's made me a little bit more realistic. In the beginning, I was looking for a house that checked the most boxes. Now I think I've tweaked my mindset a little bit to understand how the house will really feel to live in it for not only me, but for my pets. And so the prettiest house might not always be the easiest house to manage with pets. And the house with the most land might not always be the safest for your pets. And the least expensive house might not really be the least expensive house once you add in all the work you need to do to make it safe for your pets and make it a good place for them to live. And that's kind of where I am and the balance that I'm trying to find. So I know I can't buy a house based entirely on every possible thing that could go wrong. If I did that, I probably would stay in my RV forever. But what I'm trying to do is to avoid a house where there are too many risks and too many inconveniences all in the same place. So the bottom line is I'm still looking. I haven't bought anything yet. And I'm sure that there are more things that I haven't thought of that I will discover when I visit the next houses, which happens to be tomorrow. And that's part of why I wanted to talk about this now while I'm still learning, instead of waiting until I've bought a house and pretending like I had it all figured out all along. At the beginning of this process, I thought buying with pets in mind meant finding the yard and checking whether I could put up a fence. Now I'm looking at roads, layouts, stairs, floors, heating systems, and the way the house is going to work as my pets and I get older. The house doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to work well enough that daily life feels safe and manageable for all of us. And apparently bringing six pets into the house-hunting process means I have six unpaid inspectors who don't care about countertops and have no money for down payments, but they still get a really, really big vote.

Amy Castro (25:51.459)
If you've ever had to choose a home with your pets in mind, I'd love to hear what surprised you. So send me a message or leave a comment on our social or on our website and tell me what you learned the hard way. And if you're alright with it, we might share your story with our followers. Thanks for listening to the Pet Parent Hotline. If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself. Text a friend right now with a link and tell them I've got a show that you need to hear. And ask them to let you know what they think. And remember, your pet's best life starts with you living yours. So be sure to take good care of yourself this week and your pets.