Ask the Captive-Bred Question First
A common house gecko is a tiny, fast, nocturnal lizard that lives on walls and ceilings across the tropics, and the honest first question is whether this one was bred in captivity at all. Most house geckos offered for sale are wild-caught, so ask the breeder to show you the breeding group, the eggs, and recent hatchlings. House gecko eggs are hard-shelled, round, and often glued inside a hide or corner, and a real breeder can point to them. Ask how long the breeder has kept the parents and whether the young are raised separately from the adults.
Ask the age of the gecko you are buying. A hatchling house gecko is barely longer than a paperclip, fragile, and far harder to establish than a well-started juvenile, so age changes what fair expectations look like.
Ask What It Hunts and How It Eats
Ask which insects this gecko eats, because a common house gecko takes small live prey: tiny crickets, small roaches, fruit flies for the smallest babies, and the occasional moth. Ask whether the breeder dusts the insects with calcium and vitamins and how often, since a fast-growing little hunter on undusted feeders develops weak bones. Ask whether the gecko hunts from a perch, stalks on the ground glass, or mostly takes insects near its hide, and whether it eats in front of people or only after lights-out. A gecko that has never been seen eating is a gamble at this size, where there is almost no body reserve to skip meals on.
Ask about water: most house geckos lick droplets from leaves and glass after misting rather than drinking from a dish, so ask how the breeder mists and whether a shallow dish is also offered.
Ask About Housing, Humidity, and Escapes
Ask what enclosure this gecko lives in now, and have the breeder describe the lid. A common house gecko flattens itself through gaps that look sealed, walks straight up glass, and treats a loose screen top as an open door, so escape-proofing is the central housing question. Ask what humidity range the breeder keeps, how they measure it, and what hides are provided at different heights, since this gecko spends the day pressed inside a narrow, dark retreat. Ask whether the breeder keeps them singly or in groups, and what happened when animals were housed together, because males fight and even females can bully a smaller cage mate away from food.
Ask what temperatures the enclosure reaches on the warm side and whether any heat source is used at all in the breeder's room.
Ask About Handling, Health, and Honest Limits
Ask the breeder to tell you plainly whether a common house gecko is a pet to watch rather than to hold. Its skin is delicate, its tail drops readily, and a loose gecko in a room is nearly uncatchable, so a breeder who frames it as a display animal is being truthful. Ask what a healthy gecko's droppings look like, whether the breeding group has ever shown runny stools or unexplained deaths, and whether new animals are quarantined. Ask how long the breeder expects one to live in good care, and what usually goes wrong first for beginners. That last answer, often escapes and poor feeding, tells you where to put your own effort.
Agree on What Comes With the Gecko
Ask for whatever history exists in writing: hatch date if known, parents, foods accepted, and any notes on sex, though sexing a young house gecko is genuinely difficult and an honest breeder may say so. Ask whether the breeder will take the gecko back if it escapes its first enclosure setup and is recovered stressed, or if your circumstances change. For a pet this small, a written page of breeder notes carries outsized value once you are home alone with it. Handing that page into KinsLe Transferrable Profiles means the gecko's origin, diet, and quirks transfer with the animal itself, keeping its breeder's knowledge attached to its profile.