Get started as a house sitter
How caring for pets, plants and pools can help you live rent free
Looking for an affordable way to keep a roof overhead? Are you an animal lover or avid gardener? Do you like helping people?
Christmas is a great time to try out house sitting. Many people travel over the festive season and need care for their home & pets while away.
What does a house sitter do?
A house sitter lives onsite in a home while the normal occupants are away. A house sitter usually provides:
security
pet care
garden care
mail collection
basic maintenance.
A house sitter helps people travel for work or leisure. By taking care of their home, pets and plants, a house sitter helps home and pet owners to relax while they are away.
Where to find housesits
Word of Mouth
When I started housesitting, just talking to people about what I was doing led to many opportunities. Happy clients told their friends about me, and my own network referred their friends and family.
Tell your neighbours, workmates, family and friends, you are available to house sit. Many have heard of house sitting, but until they meet a real live sitter, they don’t connect how it might be helpful for them.
Facebook
If you want to use Facebook to find housesits, there are many groups set up. Search in FB groups for “house sitting” “housesit” “house sitter”. Many are targeted for local areas so include place names to find something specific. For example, “Australia” “Michigan” or “Niagara Falls”. You’ll find many such groups are full of sitters posting their availability. What you want are the ones where only owners can advertise for a sitter.
Housesit websites
Most housesits I’ve done were sourced from websites specifically aimed at helping home and pet owners find a registered sitter. Generally, it’s free for a home or pet owner to advertise on these sites. Sitters pay annual fees to register on these websites, but it costs less than one night’s accommodation in a hotel.
Why register on a paid site?
Professionalism
When you set up a profile on a registered sitters’ website or app, you appear more professional. Even when you housesit for free as a win-win exchange, you can still be professional in the way you approach it. The most common feedback I have from owners is how much they appreciate my professional attitude.
Most sites allow reviews to be left by home and pet owners you’ve helped. This provides immediate social proof of being good at what you do.
Quality clients
Owners who use a registered house sitting website or app (instead of Facebook) to find a housesitter are usually more intentional.
They have put thought into what they need and who they want to do that.
They have researched the options available to them.
They see the value of housesitters because sitters are presented in a professional way.
They usually understand house sit etiquette and appreciate your service.
Avoid time wasters or potential nightmare house sits
After 10 years of experience house sitting across Australia and the world, I’ve learned it is too easy for an owner to put a quick post on social media seeking a house sitter. Little thought, small effort, vague info. They are less invested than one who intentionally joins a house sitting website to seek a sitter.
A house sitting website is a specialised third party. It encourages accountability of owner and sitter. There is a record held by an invested third party of what the owner advertised and any communication between owner and sitter on the site. Accountability both ways is a win-win for owners and sitters.
Marketing made easy
House sitting websites or apps provide a platform for you to market your service. You can write a profile, share photos, reviews and other information that will help you stand out as the best choice.
It’s easy to share a link to your house sitter profile page via text message, social media or in an email. You can even include a QR code on a business card. When someone scans it with their phone camera, your sitter profile page will automatically open up.
Admin management tools
Another reason to join registered sitter sites is the inbuilt tools which help you manage the administrative side of your bookings. Each site varies, but management tools can include:
Messaging – in the initial stages of enquiry, you can contact owners, or they can contact you via the inbuilt messaging system. Managing enquiries is so much easier using the dedicated messaging section provided by a housesitting website or app.
Notifications alert you when a message is received, and you can attend to them when you’re free of distraction. This helps you present a professional manner to potential clients. There’s nothing worse than getting a phone call when you’re at the supermarket checkout, driving or focused on other work.
Calendar - record your bookings and availability on the inbuilt calendar.
When you accept a sit advertised on some websites or apps, the dates are automatically added to your calendar on the site. Some also include automatic date alignment built into their calendar. For example, sits that clash with dates already booked on your calendar won’t show up for you. This helps simplify the process for you and owners. It helps you avoid double-booking yourself and helps owners see who is available for the dates they need a sitter.
Locations – being registered as a sitter on a website also makes it easier for you to find sits in specific locations. Search parameters can include, country, state, city/town or even include a map that shows people looking for a housesitter within the dates you select.
Reviews – another reason to register with a housesitting website or app is the inbuilt review system. When you complete a sit booked on that site, you can easily receive references from happy owners whose home or pet you looked after. Excellent references or reviews will give other owners confidence in booking you. Word-of-mouth advertising works best. People like to choose people who’ve proven to be good at what they do.
Which website?
There are many websites which help home and pet owners find sitters and vice versa. My recommendation comes from 10 years of personally using these platforms.
After trying a few, I narrowed it down to two main sites, the main one being:
The House Sitters Group is an international group with five websites catering to different countries. Each website in this larger group works on the same layout design. So, if you choose to travel the world with housesitting, you don’t have to learn a new interface for each country.
Australia www.aussiehousesitters.com.au
New Zealand www.kiwihousesitters.co.nz
Canada www.housesitterscanada.com
USA www.housesittersamerica.com
Another bonus with this group of sites is that any reviews you receive can be linked to other sites within their group. For example, reviews from sits I did in Canada show on my Australian housesitter profile. Owners often comment on those international reviews as a positive thing. They see it as giving more weight to my credentials as an experienced house sitter.
SAVE $$ on signup
Book bonus: I’ve negotiated a discount on sign up fees, especially for readers of my book, Stuff the Status Quo who want to register with any of the above websites from the House Sitter Group.
Still sitting on the fence?
If you buy the book and use the discount code provided in it, you’ll basically be getting the book for free. Plus, you could save hundreds or thousands of dollars in rent by house sitting. To get the discount code, buy Stuff the Status Quo - a practical book packed full of action-focused ways (not just house sitting) to cut the cost of keeping a roof overhead.