Pet-owning tenants: Which Buenos Aires neighborhoods make renting easier?

For tenants with pets, the perfect Buenos Aires apartment can disappear at the final hurdle. After searching online, walking through neighborhoods and finding a place with the right light, location, rooms and price, renters may still hear one decisive answer from the landlord: no.

The question, “Do you accept pets?”, has become increasingly important in a city where dogs and cats outnumber children aged 14 or younger. The latest census by the Buenos Aires city statistics office counted 493,676 dogs and 368,176 cats, for a total of 861,852 pets. The city has 460,696 children in that age group, meaning pets outnumber them by 401,156.

The figures reflect the growing role of animals in porteño households, where they provide companionship and emotional support and are increasingly treated as family members. For renters, permission to move in with a dog or cat is becoming an essential requirement, whether the decision rests with the owner or the building's condominium association.

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Do you accept pets?

Yet rental listings often provide no answer. Of 105,580 rental advertisements posted nationwide over the previous 90 days, 73.9% did not mention pets at all, according to a Roomix survey. They neither accepted nor rejected them. Around 19,000 listings, or 18.2% of the total, said pets were accepted. Roughly 14,000 identified that as an attribute, while only 5,000 included it in the description.

“Writing about pets in a rental listing is almost like writing to say no,” the report said. For owners, refusing pets can mean leaving a property empty for longer than expected.

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Writing about pets in a rental listing is almost like writing to say no.