Dogs may be man’s best friend. But when it comes to moving from one residence to another, you have to be your dog’s best buddy -- and your own.

In other words, you should consider Fido’s needs just as you consider yours and those of your children’s. After all, he or she is part of the family. And to paraphrase an old saw, if your dog ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna be happy.

“Having a pet is a responsibility similar to having children,” Barbara Todaro of Franklin, Massachusetts, RE/MAX Executive Realty posted the other day on ActiveRain, the popular real estate community and chat room. “They all have needs.”

Jeff Dowler of Solutions Real Estate in Carlsbad, California, agrees: “Doing your (doggie) due diligence is essential so you don’t make a big mistake.”

One important factor many people fail to consider, especially when they are buying an existing home as opposed to new construction, is whether the previous owners had a dog of their own. If they did, your dog will probably be marking their own territory as soon as you move in.

According to the Best Friends Animal Society, claiming the house as their own is most common among dogs that are not spayed or neutered. But any dog has the potential to mark territory. And a sniff test isn’t enough of an assurance that this won’t happen, says Rebecca Gaujot of Vision Quest Realty in Lewisburg, West Virginia.

“Your dog’s sense of smell is much stronger than yours,” says Gaujot, who started the ActiveRain conversation on canine issues. Her advice: “If possible, avoid homes where the previous owners had dogs.”

You’ll not only want a dog-friendly house, you’ll also want a dog-friendly community where animals are cherished, not downgraded or even denigrated.

For starters, realize that many places, but especially condominium properties, have restrictions on dogs and other pets. Some are severe, such as weight and breed. Some limit the number of pets. And some may even ban them entirely.

If you don’t know the rules going in, you may have to get rid of your pets, or pick up and move somewhere else. “When a family has pets, it’s best to think about their needs, too, before the move, than to find out the hard way that there may be issues,” says agent Patricia Feager of DFW Fine Properties in Southlake, Texas.

If your dog requires room to run, consider a community with large lots and houses with plenty of backyard. Or a spot that has a dog park or recreation area not too far from the house you are planning to buy.

But again, make sure you know the rules, especially if you plan to erect a fence so your dog can enjoy your yard without supervision. Some communities set down requirements for the type of fence you can put up, and some ban them entirely.

If you plan to walk your dog daily, you might want to look at places that have sidewalks. They are easier to navigate for humans, especially older folk. Agent Matthew Klinowski of Downing-Frye in Naples, Florida, ran into that problem himself at his previous house. There were no sidewalks, but the Klinowski clan didn’t realize how important they were until after they moved in. “I prefer to walk our dogs on sidewalks whenever possible,” the Florida agent says.

Another thing to consider: Many places require owners to pick up after their pooches. Of course, this is the right thing to do wherever you live, but many communities mandate it. And if the property doesn’t, the local government might.

And one more thing: Whereas a neighborhood where people are out walking their dogs morning and night can be an indication that it is a good place for a social pup to make friends, a place where tethered but otherwise unattended dogs are barking continuously at people passing by “might not be the most pleasant place for walks,” Gaujot offers.

Back inside the house itself, Gaujot suggests looking for open floor plans so you and the kids can enjoy play sessions with Fido. If the house has a stairway, say, to a basement rec room or to the upstairs sleeping area, make sure the steps are carpeted so your dog -- and kids -- won’t slip, slide away.

If your pooch is getting up in age, you might want to consider houses that have just a few steps -- or none at all. As my own 40-pound pal moved up in years, I had to carry him with me every time I went to my basement office. Otherwise, he’d sit at the top of the steps and whimper until I went back and fetched him.

There’s no question that purchasing a newly constructed house is an exciting time. But if time is of the essence, consider buying a house out the builder’s inventory of finished but unsold homes.

Both to-be-built houses and inventory homes have their positives and negatives. If you need the time to sell your current place, hold a couple of yard sales to get rid of the stuff you no longer need or want, pack up the stuff you’re taking with you and take care of the myriad of other details involved in moving, what they call a “dirt” house in Texas is probably for you.

Not only do you get a scratch-built home that comes together from the ground up, you get to make some changes to the floor plan, add whatever options and upgrades you might want and pick all the finishes -- from the colors on the walls to the material used for your countertops to the style of your cabinetry. You even get to choose the exterior elevation you like.

“You have a lot of flexibility,” says Brian Hoffman, the third-generation owner of Red Seal Homes, headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. “Lighting, plumbing, walls. If you have the time to get a home exactly as you want so it doesn’t look like everybody else’s, build-to-suit is the way to go.”

It’s nice to have choices, for they personalize what is essentially a standard production house. “You can put your stamp on it,” says Kathy Zigler, sales counselor at Caldwell Homes in Houston. “But it can be overwhelming” to have to make all the choices that are necessary.

“There are a million tiny decisions to make,” according to Haubstat, Indiana-based Reinbrecht Homes. “It’s not uncommon for a couple to make a lot of top-tier selections, only to realize they’re overshot their allowances by $100,000 or more.”

Another drawback: Building a house takes time, about seven months on average, according to the latest data from the National Association of Home Builders. And it could take longer -- nine to 10 months in the Mid-Atlantic region -- depending on where you are buying.

But that was way back in 2012, a lifetime ago in the construction business. Now, with the widespread shortage of construction labor -- the number of unfilled construction jobs is nearing 300,000, the most since the end of the Great Recession -- it probably takes somewhat longer.

So, if time is the determining factor -- say your old place sold faster than you thought it would, you’re anxious to move before the new school year starts or you’re changing jobs and have to relocate your family ASAP -- purchasing an inventory home may not be that big of a compromise.

For one thing, Zigler in Texas points out, “you get to see exactly what you are going to get.” No trying to visualize the house by reading floor plans or blueprints. No trying to mentally remove all the upgrades builders tend to put into their model homes. With an inventory home, it’s all there, right before your eyes.

Another important factor: If you have your financing all arranged and are pre-approved for a mortgage, you can probably close the deal within 14 days, says Hoffman, who has anywhere from four to 10 completed or nearly completed houses in inventory at any one time, depending on the pace of sales in a particular location. Indeed, Red Seal is “doing more speculative building lately” than at any time in its 80-plus years, he reports.

Also, you won’t have to settle for a lousy home site. Inventory houses are built throughout a community, not just in the worst places. One such Caldwell house in Cypress, Texas, is actually on an oversized lot; another has a view of the lake.

The house probably won’t be a stripped-down, basic model, either. Typically, Caldwell’s inventory houses have some upgrades -- an upgraded master bathroom, for example, or a gourmet kitchen. Says Hoffman of Red Seal: “Buyers of move-in ready homes have the benefit of finishes and special features hand-selected by our design team.”

If the house is finished, you are not going to be able to customize. But if it is still under construction, some degree of customization may be available, depending how far along the builder is.

Prices of inventory houses often are negotiable, too. After all, the longer the house languishes on the market, the more it costs the builder.

Zigler at Caldwell says the usual markdown is 10 percent, and the builder may be willing to go lower, depending on the property, but especially if the house is one of the few remaining to be sold. “We’re open to all offers,” she says. “Builders build homes to be lived in, not sit on the market, so you can get the best deals on these homes.”

If the builder won’t cut his price, maybe he’ll throw in some financing help. According to New York-based consultant Ivy Zelman, builders are increasingly offering such items as closing cost assistance, mortgage rate buy-downs or increased commissions for agents who bring buyers to their doors.

Because time is money, builders generally are more motivated to offer these kind of concessions on inventory models than production houses. All you gotta do is ask.

A sea change may be coming in the way the homeless are being housed.

While there’s still a need, especially in cold weather, for the traditional shelter with cots and curfews, a new emphasis on permanent, supportive housing is taking this kind of living option away from the shelter model into the realm of for-profit real estate development.

Hunt Capital Partners is on the leading edge. The Los Angeles-based syndication unit of the Hunt Companies is a big capital markets player. It has raised more than $1.5 billion in Low Income Housing Tax Credit equity for affordable housing projects, some of which target permanent solutions for the homeless.

HCP recently announced the closing of $4.2 million in LIHTC equity for the construction of Rhododendron Place in Vancouver, Washington. The project will consist of newly built studio apartments, with 23 of them set aside for homeless people. Half of the total will go to very low-income residents, with incomes up to 30 percent of area median incomes; the other half, to low-income renters with incomes up to 50 percent AMI.

While the overall homeless population has declined since 2010, new research puts the current total at 661,000 nationwide. That’s 100,000 higher than the official number from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Projects like the one in Vancouver are designed for the special needs of homeless people. For example, they rarely have much in the way of furniture, so the units will come with some basic furnishings -- a single bed frame, mattress, side table, desk and chair. Supportive services will also be offered through Columbia Mental Health Services.

“These include child and family services, youth services, mentoring, drug and alcohol treatment, employment services, medical, supported housing and treatment programs, to name a few,” according to Dana Mayo, Hunt Capital executive managing director.

Mayo says: “Our investment in this development will provide affordable housing for the homeless and equip them with resources to help break the cycle of poverty.”

The total development cost for the project is $7.78 million. Hunt Capital Partners “syndicated” the complicated tax credit deal, meaning it found investors who could use a tax break to get one by investing in low-income housing. Investors can either be a single entity or a consortium of investors. In this case, it was a multi-investor fund.

Hunt’s local partners, the Vancouver Housing Authority and Columbia Non-Profit Housing, have long had an emphasis on housing the homeless. CNPH provided a $2.1 million construction-to-permanent loan and VHA provided a $1.2 million C2P loan for Rhododendron Place.

The LIHTC is a complex program that has managed to finance over 2 million affordable homes since 1986.

Since it involves the tax code, it is overseen by the Internal Revenue Service. But it is administered by state housing finance agencies, which award the credit to real estate developers who put forward projects like Rhododendron Place. Then the credits are sold to investors through syndicators like Hunt Capital.

The tax credit can be a potent weapon for constructing permanent housing for the homeless, thus providing more units feeding the philosophy of “rapid rehousing” of homeless people to prevent them from becoming homeless long-term.

In Minneapolis, for example, of the 3,000 homeless people served in 2016-2017 by the Adult Shelter Connect program affiliated with Simpson Housing Services, 40 percent were placed into subsidized rental housing, with 7 percent of them going into housing immediately from the shelters.

Hunt Capital Partners now has helped finance a total of four developments for homeless or developmentally disabled people, two in Florida, one in Texas and the one in Washington state.

In Jacksonville, Florida, it raised $9.2 million in a multi-investor syndication to build Sulzbacher Village, a 124-unit development with 70 slots reserved to permanently house homeless women with children. The other 54 are temporary homeless units. Support services include an on-site health clinic.

Local buy-in was important, as Jacksonville “has decided it wants to end homelessness, not manage it,” says Cindy Funkhouser, president and chief executive of Sulzbacher, who vows that no homeless woman with a child will ever be turned away from its doors.

St. Paul, Minnesota is another good example of this forward-thinking change in philosophy. One property has gone from a shelter where people slept on mats on cold, concrete floors to a massive $115 million multi-part development through Catholic Charities.

Named for the head of the Catholic Workers Movement, an early advocate for the homeless, Dorothy Day Place will have multiple buildings and feature an enormous 320-bed shelter. The plan calls for 193 units of permanent housing completed in the first building phase, and an additional 177 units of permanent housing completed by the end. A new wing will provide transitional housing, where the working homeless -- of which there are many -- pay $7 a night rent for their period of residency. Then, if they have met certain conditions, the rent money is rebated to them to help pay some of their move-in costs when they transition into a permanent apartment.

Dominium of Minneapolis was the syndicator for the LIHTC tax credits on this deal, but there was only a single investor, U.S. Bank of Minneapolis. The project also tapped New Markets Tax Credits for the commercial/supportive part of the project.

Freelance writer Mark Fogarty and research assistant Priestess J. Bearstops contributed to this report.