How to save money on accommodation when traveling – House sitting

Many people ask us how can we travel for so long. “Are you rich?”, “How can you afford staying abroad so long, so often?”. The answer is: We are not rich, but we save a lot on accommodation expenses. We are housesitters.

This article contains the following sections:

Here is a video of one of our favourite pet sits we did in 2019

What is house sitting?

As you might guess, house sitting is all about staying in someone else’s home. While house sitting, it is your responsibility to take care of the home while the owner is away on a vacation or for work. In many cases, these homes include adorable pet companions! These can be dogs and cats, but also fish, sheep, horses, lizards… you can imagine (or not) what kind of animals people can keep at home.

In the past few years house sitting has become widely popular among travelers. Well, not just travelers, also digital nomads and retired people — people with enough time and flexibility to spend a few days, weeks, or months taking care their pets, home and plants while the owners are away.

Some people compare it to a home exchange, but house sitting is slightly different. House sitting does not require two households to swap. Here the exchange is the time spent, love given and experience had with the pets and for the home itself. Or with other words:

“You stay at my place, taking care of my pets while I am away. You don’t pay rent, I don’t pay you” as the home/pet owners could say. Or “I stay at your place, I don’t pay you any rent, and I take care of your pet while you are away” said by the sitter.

How to go house sitting?

House sitting is not a new thing, but it certainly boomed as technology evolved, and since we live in a hyper connected world it has become global. To start house sitting, you can just search on Google to find plenty of websites that connect home owners with house sitters. Some of them are free, some of them require a yearly fee, and some you can make money off.

Most of the websites just need you to sign up, fill your profile and start looking for homes to sit, or sitters to come to your home. Once you find a place/animal/sitter you like, send an application and done. Now wait for a reply and see if they liked you. From this point it might be direct communication between the home owner and the sitter. The owner will give some guidelines and instructions about the house, the pets, do’s and don’ts.

How to be a good house sitter?

Like most things in this world, you become more experienced with practice: Practice and experience. If you want to be a pet sitter, you will need experience with animals. So, when you create your sitter profile, include information that shows your love for animals, this can include your previous pet ownership, your experience handling animals, or anything that makes you the perfect candidate to look after an owners furry companion. Yes, it sounds like applying for a job. Your profile has to contain the photos and the info that will make the home owners choose YOU to trust their home and their pets for a while. So you better be honest, transparent and clear.

Pet sitting is for animal lovers. But not only that, you have to be responsible and know how to deal with pets. So, any prior experience with animals is useful since you might be meeting different kinds of animals, could be small puppies, playful kittens, heavy and strong dogs…
Before applying for a sit, make sure you can do the job and have the skills required to take care of that pet and home. But also be confident, don’t let some cat diabetes scare you away — the owner will provide you with the right information on how to manage your time with the pets.

Another powerful thing to cause a good impression with your application is references: it’s good to show previous house and pet sitting experiences, especially in the words of a home and pet owner. Those reviews build up on your profile — they look just like they would on Amazon products, including a star rated system.

But how can you get your first sit and reviews?

We all love a nice house and beautiful pets, but most of the time these home listings have lots of candidates applying for them — much like a job application, if you’re the right fit, you’re most likely going to work well together — house sitting is the same! A house sitter and pet owner will know when they’ve found the perfect match.

Our best advice to get your first sit would be apply for as many house sits as possible, which you feel you could hold the responsibility for. But, how do you know if a sit is popular? Most of the websites show the number of applicants per house sit, so you know how many other candidates you are competing against. Maybe apply for some urgent sits — if you know you can make them — or for more humble homes since those owners are more in need of sitters and might have less applicants to choose from.

Another tip to be a good house sitter is to be a good listener. It sounds obvious, but reading the instructions carefully on the Welcome Guide and listening to the pet owners is important to understand the pets and the home needs. Having all those needs clear from the beginning is much better than continuing to ask the owners after they have left, since that might give them a feeling that you don’t know what you are doing and need help. Most home and pet owners are ok with messaging or calling sitters for further instructions, but you have to keep in mind they are on vacation, or on a trip abroad and it could be hard to reach them due to network issues or time difference — not to mention you don’t want to keep worrying them when they are thousands of kilometers away from their beloved pets.

How to apply for TrustedHousesitters

When we were preparing for our trips, we always have so many things to get done before we head off: packing was the last of our worries, as we still had vaccines to take, get travel insurance, prepare visas and documents. And, of course, signing up to become a house sitter! The process is very easy. Head to TrustedHousesitters and sign up as a sitter (or as an owner if you are the one leaving your home and pets and want to find a sitter to take care of them).

After filling the form you’ll have to pay a small yearly fee to complete your membership. But this wasn’t a big deal after thinking about how much you save on accommodation in even your first sit —it is a bargain.

Once you have completed your sign up process, it’s time to start browsing and finding places to stay! We recommend you to download the mobile app for more convenience too. Searching for house sits is pretty straight forward. You can search and filter by location, dates, duration of the stay and type of pets. Once you find something you like, you can read all the info left by the owner, details like the house rules, pet care instructions and more info about house surroundings, shops, sightseeing, etc. You can also see how many applicants have already applied.
Here is a tip: sign up to the TrustedHousesitters emails so you get fresh updates in your email inbox and you can be one of the first people to apply to new house sits that’s very important, since owners may be impressed by the first applicants than after reading lots of messages by others.

When you apply for your desired sit, you should write a message introducing yourself, talking about your experience with pets, plans and why you are the best sitter for that home and pet. Done! Now it’s time to wait for the owner reply. You might get an early reply thanking you for applying and telling you they need some time to go through all applications. You might also get approved right away. In some scenarios, we had a “connection” where the owners liked our message and profile right away and chose us to be their sitters, but you could get a “sorry, but we’ve chosen another sitter” message — don’t be disheartened, keep trying! You can also exchange some messages and maybe even be asked for a quick video call to virtually meet you, and be asked a few questions to help the owners decide if you are right. We’ve done some Skype and WhatsApp video calls with owners before being chosen, and it’s always been a good thing to get more info about the pets, the home, etc. Maybe you can even get a first glimpse of that furry little one you are going to bond with!

How to make a good house sitter profile

Your TrustedHousesitters profile has some different sections to show all the appropriate information that an owner will need to know about you. Write a good profile showing your love for animals and your experience with pets, etc. Upload some photos of yourself and your favorite pets, and make sure you get some references. Especially before you start house sitting with TrustedHousesitters, you might have taken care of someone else’s pet, but outside TrustedHousesitters platform.

Now it’s time to send them a request for a reference so they can write and leave a reference on your profile saying how good you were with their pets and home while they were away.

Getting verified is also an important step towards building the best profile. TrustedHousesitters offers two levels of verification. All sitters are encouraged to earn free verifications, offering everyone more peace of mind. Depending on the chosen level, Basic or Standard, sitters go through several stages of checks to become verified. These verifications include email address and phone number, identity and documents checking. Your profile will look much better once you get them. And owners will trust more a profile with all those verifications. Last but not least, reviews! Once you start accumulating sits, it’s recommended to ask the owners to leave a review on your profile, which for TrustedHousesitters, is notified to and owner automatically. That will help other owners to see how good you are and what your strengths are as a sitter.

Best practices while house sitting

Some days before your sit starts, the owner will upload to TrustedHousesitters a Welcome Guide for the sitter: that’s you. That Welcome Guide can be an extensive amount of information including all you need to know while staying in the owners home. This will not only cover pet care (feeding, playing, sleeping, walking habits) but also info about the vet in case of need, rules for the house: from kitchen appliances, fireplace, garage, and how to use different amenities in the house like swimming pool, gym, etc. It will also contain instructions about garbage collection and recycling, gas, water, electricity, internet, etc. If after reading it, you still have any doubt, remember to ask the owner.

Many of the times, upon arrival to the house, the owners will meet you in person and offer to show you around and give more detailed information. We even met some owners who printed a beautiful Welcome Guide with some cute drawings and maps of the neighbourhood with some cafes, groceries, bars and interesting places to visit! We loved those! Once the owners leave, you are on your own! Start enjoying the time with the pet and enjoy the cozy home! Because that will be your home for the next few days, or weeks, or even months!

While you are house and pet sitting, we recommend sending messages and photos often to the owners to show how their pets are doing – but check how often they’d like to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to ask anything about the house or the pet if you don’t know something or if anything goes wrong. You might also offer a video call once in a while so they get to see their missed ones in action or sleeping. It’s a pretty nice feeling to see that connection between the pet and the owner through a phone screen!
It might be obvious to say, but keep the house tidy and clean all the time so the owners get the best impression when they come back. If everything went well, they might even consider you again to sit for them for their next vacation!

TrustedHousesitters honest review

In more than two years house sitting through TrustedHousesitters and more than 10sits, we have never had an issue. All the house sits went incredibly well and we fell in love with all the pets we stayed with. The homes were different, and they all had their own advantages and disadvantages. It’s hard to choose our favorite— we loved them all and we had precious times in all of them. As stated by TrustedHousesitters’ T&Cs, all the pet food and care expenses are covered by the owners. They always left enough food and medical supplies for the whole sitting period. That was sometimes not possible for the longer sits. But, the owners will reimburse the food and medical expenses once the sit is finished if that is agreed upon before they leave.

In some of the houses the owners even had a cleaner come over once a week or so, so we didn’t have to worry too much about cleaning.We had such great owners who continued to recommend us places to visit and restaurants to try!

We say it all went well, but TrustedHousesitters also offers a great support like a free 24 hour Vet Advice Line for expert help and advice, day or night in case anything goes wrong. Also, all members have Insurance Backed Guarantee which covers property damage, theft and public liability in case the sitter has an accident around the property.

We must say that TrustedHousesitters changed the way we travel. We experience a more local and authentic life abroad, in a more relaxed way, having enough time to explore the neighbourhood and see how locals live not only near the tourist spots but also in more rural areas that we normally don’t visit as a traveller.