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If you’re looking to start house sitting with Trusted Housesitters, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’re going to share our top house sitting tips, including dos and don’ts, so you know how to land the house sits you want and avoid the bad ones.
Click here to get 30% off any Trusted Housesitters membership with the code AFFNPLH26.
We’ve been house sitting with Trusted Housesitters since 2019. So far, we’ve done 25 house sits in 11 different countries for over 900 nights of rent-free living, with more house sits on the books for later this year.
As you may have guessed, we’re big fans of house sitting, and we’ve learned a lot over the years. Here are our top 10 tips to help you be a successful house sitter.
How House Sitting Work
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s discuss some house sitting basics first.
House sitting works as an exchange, which means no money changes hands. Pet parents need someone trustworthy and responsible to look after their home and fur babies, and house sitters want a place to stay in exchange for taking care of said home and fur babies.
But trusting a stranger from the internet to come to your house is crazy, right? Yes, it is!
That’s why we suggest using a house sitting platform, like Trusted Housesitters. That way, pet parents know that the house sitters they need are verified and trustworthy, which leads us into our first tip:
1. Create a Trusted Housesitters Profile that Stands Out
Once you sign up with Trusted Housesitters, the first thing you’ll need to do as a house sitter is create your profile. Your profile is the one of the first things the pet parent is going to check out when you apply for a house sit. Think of it like your house sitting resume. Here’s what you’ll want to include:
Photos
First, you’ll want to include pictures of yourself, anyone you’ll be house sitting with, like your partner, kids, family members, or friends. You can also add photos of you with animals, and photos that show off your personality and hobbies.
Your Experience
Then, you’ll write about any ‘Experience’ you have with taking care of pets and homes, whether your own or other people’s. You can also include experience you have with gardening, pool maintenance, or any other useful home-related skills.
About You
You’ll also write an ‘About’ section where you can introduce yourself, share about your work, your interests, and your hobbies, so that the pet parent can get to know you better. If you’re house sitting with a partner or someone else, share about them here as well.
Why You Want to House Sit
The next section is about why you want to house sit. That’s personal to you. For us, we share that it’s a great way for us to travel and spend time with pets since, as full-time travelers, we don’t have pets of our own.
Additional Tips
Write in a conversational and friendly tone. You want your personality to shine through in your profile. Keep each section concise and friendly; you don’t need to write a novel. You want the pet parents to feel that you’re easy to communicate with.
2. How to Build Your Reputation Early (Even Without Experience)
Like every part of our lives, from movies to burritos, reviews are everything, and house sitting is no different.
Reviews are the main way pet parents know who to trust when they choose a house sitter, and they will definitely check out yours. The thing is, you need reviews to get house sits, but you also need house sits to get reviews. Oh no!
Luckily, before you get your first review, you can start collecting external references from people who can speak to your character.
How to Get External References
You can get external references from friends and family, really anyone who has seen you act like a responsible adult around their belongings and pets, and is willing to write about you on the internet.
Maybe you walked your neighbor’s dog while they were away, chilled with your friend’s cat, or watered your co-worker’s plants when they went on vacation. Heck, you can even ask your mom (as long as she’s willing to say you’re responsible).
We recommend getting at least three external references before you start applying for house sits.
Trusted Housesitters makes it easy to request external references. After asking your friends and family if they’d be willing to write you a reference, you can send them a link where they can write their reference.
Once they’ve written and submitted their reference, it will automatically be added to your Trusted Housesitters profile. The people who write you external references do not need to be Trusted Housesitters members.
3. How to Find the Best House Sits for You
Trusted Housesitters has the largest global database of house sitters and pet parents, with over 230k members and thousands of house sits available all over the world year-round.
There are several ways to search for house sits through Trusted Housesitters.
We made a video walking you through the backend of the Trusted Housesitters website so you can see this more clearly.
4. The Best Times to Search for House Sits on Trusted Housesitters
Our next tip is about the best times of year to find house sits and how early to apply.
You can find thousands of house sits all over the world at any time of year on Trusted Housesitters! However, the most popular times to find house sits are over the summer and winter holidays.
If you have your heart set on a certain location at a certain time of year, then you can create a saved search. After you set up your saved search, you’ll receive emails whenever a house sit that meets your criteria pops up.
You can only save your searches if you have a Standard or Premium membership.
We recommend making your saved searches anywhere from two to six months before you want to travel. The further in advance, the better.
Last-Minute House Sits
You can also search for last-minute house sits. These are house sits where the pet parent needs a house sitter for a house sit that starts in the near future. Last-minute house sits can be great opportunities for newer house sitters, because they can be easier to land.
You can find last-minute house sits by going to the ‘Sort By’ button and choosing ‘Start Date’.
You might consider looking for last-minute house sits close to where you live to get some house sitting experience under your belt and reviews on your profile.
Opportunities Abound!
If you have the flexibility, you can also let remarkable house sitting opportunities dictate when and where you travel. As full-time nomads, we do this quite a lot.
Sometimes we’ll just look at Trusted Housesitters to see what parts of the world house sitting can take us to, and if the timing works out, we apply!
This has taken us to places like the mountains of Peru, the jungles of Costa Rica, a village in Japan, the islands of Thailand, and even the English suburbs. You never know what will pop up!
It’s important to note that while house sitting is a great way to find new and unique travel experiences, it is not a free vacation. Accepting a house sit means accepting the responsibilities that the pet parent puts in their listing.
Taking care of the home and the pets is your primary reason for being there.
5. Apply Fast (But Carefully)
Once you’ve found a house sit that looks good, it’s time to apply.
Trusted Housesitters changed how applications work a couple of years ago to make it more fair. Before they made the change, an unlimited number of house sitters could apply for a sit.
That system made it hard for newer house sitters to get any house sits, since they were in competition with more experienced house sitters, and it was hard on pet parents who had to sift through all those applications.
Now, Trusted Housesitters only allows five applications per house sit. This is great news for newer house sitters because now everyone has an equal shot at landing the house sits they want.
But that also means that on top of having a great profile, stellar references, and five-star reviews, you also need to be quick. When you see a house sit you want to apply for, you need to apply right then and there.
However, you also need to make sure that you are up to the task, that you can fulfill all the responsibilities the pet parent puts in their listing.
Pet parents may be looking for just a single person to house sit, maybe they have old pets that require extra care, or maybe they need house sitters who have experience working with livestock.
It’s okay to apply to more than one house sit at a time. In fact, we encourage it. You want to hedge your bets. We almost always apply to multiple house sits, just in case we don’t get our first choice. Pet parents are also considering multiple applicants, so it’s totally normal.
So you need to apply quickly. But you also need to take the time to read through the pet parent’s profile and responsibilities thoroughly to make sure you can do everything they ask.
How We Apply Quickly
After years of experience, we’ve created fill-in-the-blank templates that we use and reuse for every house sit we apply to. We find the important information in the pet parent’s profile, fill that into our template mad-lib style, and in ten minutes or less, we can send in our application.
The exact templates we’ve used to land 25 house sits and still use are included in our Ultimate House Sitting Guide.
6. Always Have a Video Chat First
This is the most important piece of advice we can give you; it will save you so many headaches and avoid potential disaster: always, 100% of the time, get on a video call with the pet parents before accepting a house sit.
We tend to do this call on Zoom or WhatsApp, whichever app is easiest for you and the pet parent.
We suggest getting on a call at the end of every application we send. The video call is so you can get to know each other and ask any questions that you may have.
Important Questions to Ask
This is an important question you should ask on every call because it could keep you from wanting to do the sit at all: how long can you be away from the pets.
For example, we did a house sit with two cats. The pet parents told us we could leave them alone for a whole day, or even leave them unattended overnight if we wanted. We didn’t do that, we love kitty cats, but it was good to know how the pet parents felt before we accepted the sit.
On the other side of the coin, we had pet parents with two elderly dogs ask us not to be away from them for more than four hours at a time. We were willing to do it for the opportunity to stay in their home, but it did limit our adventure time.
Every pet parent and house sit is different, so always make sure to ask.
It bears saying again, house sitting is not a free vacation. You are there to take care of the home and the pets, and that needs to be your primary focus. If you can’t or don’t want to do what the pet parent asks in their listing or on the call, do not accept the house sit. And that’s totally fine!
Why You Need to Have a Call
This call isn’t just about logistics; it’s also a vibe check. Do you get along with the pet parent? Is everything clear, and are they answering your questions? Could you imagine having coffee or a meal with them? Trust your intuition.
It’s okay to say you want to think about it before accepting an offer from the pet parent.
Likewise, the pet parent may tell you they need time to think or let you know they have calls with other house sitters scheduled. That’s totally normal and all part of the process.
If anything feels off during the call and you know you don’t want to accept, finish the call as usual and then send a message to the pet parent declining the sit.
There are countless house sits out there, and there’s no reason for you to get stuck in a stressful or unsafe situation.
Also, don’t accept house sits that you aren’t 100% certain you can do, because cancelling on a house sit can seriously hurt your reputation, and, like we said earlier, reviews are incredibly important.
Ready to join Trusted Housesitters? Click here to get 30% off any Trusted Housesitters membership with the code AFFNPLH26
7. Red Flags to Look Out For
A pet parent with no reviews can be a red flag and should be avoided as a new house sitter, in our opinion.
That’s because pet parents with no reviews may not understand what having house sitters entails, since they’ve never done it before.
One of our more negative house sitting experiences early on was with a pet parent with no reviews. It was red flag city.
We didn’t meet them in person before the house sit started, our communication was off for the entire sit, and we had differing expectations of what our responsibilities would be as house sitters.
That’s not to say it was absolutely awful; it was still a pretty decent experience. But, compared to all our other stellar house sitting experiences, this one sticks out.
On the other hand, we’ve also had wonderful experiences with pet parents with no reviews.
The main difference was communication. We had a great video chat, chatted on WhatsApp before we arrived, and we were able to overlap with them for two days before they left.
Red Flag #2
Another potential red flag is if the pet parent asks the house sitter to pay for things, like utilities or food for the animals.
Since house sitting is an exchange, and you are providing a service for the pet parent, it’s their responsibility to cover the utilities so the house stays comfortable for you and the pets.
Of course, there are exceptions. We did a house sit in a tropical location for five weeks. The pet parent was usually working outside the home during the day, so she only turned on her air conditioner in the evenings after work.
Since we work from home and wanted to have the aircon on all day, we offered to pay for the extra usage. She showed us her typical electric bill, and we happily paid the excess.
At another ten week house sit in Peru, we were cooking every day and eventually the gas can ran out. We let the pet parent know, and they arranged for a new one to be delivered for $15. We were happy to pay for it ourselves so we could keep cooking eggs and beans to our hearts delight.
As a house sitter, of course, you need to be respectful about your utility usage and don’t go overboard, especially on longer house sits. You can discuss with the pet parent before you accept the house sit, or when you arrive, to make sure you’re all on the same page.
Replacing Essentials
Speaking of longer house sit, you might need to buy some things like litter and food for the pets if they run out. You can buy those things yourself, keep the receipts, and the pet parent should reimburse you at the end of the sit.
But more ideally for longer house sits, the pet parent will leave you cash so you can replace items as needed. And make sure to keep the receipts.
We’ve been in both situations. Again, just make sure your communication is clear, and only do what you are comfortable with.
8. Overlap with the Pet Parent Before the Sit
If possible, try to overlap with the pet parent before they leave, even if just for a few hours.
That way, you can see the home through their eyes and understand what’s important for them, and you can tend to their home and pets the same way they do.
That can be things like plant-watering schedules, dog-walking routes, how to feed the pets, and anything else they want to show you.
Pet parents are usually thorough in their home tours, but there may be things that they could forget to show you.
Make sure to ask where important items are like the fuse box, waters mains, Wi-Fi router, the first-aid kit, and the cleaning supplies.
House Cameras
Make sure to ask if the pet parent has any indoor cameras and that they turn them off during your stay.
Trusted Housesitters’ terms and conditions state that pet parents are not allowed to enable any internal recording or monitoring devices during a house sit, another reason we like using them.
External recording devices, like doorbell ring cameras and outdoor security cameras, are ok, but the pet parents should tell you where those are as well.
The Welcome Guide
Trusted Housesitters asks pet parents to create a welcome guide for the house sitter with basic information about the pets and the neighborhood and stuff like that. The welcome guide should also include the contact info for the pet parent’s preferred vet.
Trusted Housesitters Standard and Premium memberships include 24/7 online vet assistance, just in case.
If there are any complicated tasks, like cleaning a pool or something like that, get the instructions written down in an email or WhatsApp message so you can reference them later.
Some pet parents will even create tutorial videos for different appliances in their home, which we always appreciate.
Neighborhood Know-How
Make sure to ask about a “backup” person you can talk to in case the pet parent isn’t available for some reason.
This can be a trusted neighbor or local family member, and make sure you have their contact information. You probably won’t need to contact them, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Ask the pet parent if they have any maintenance scheduled during the house sit, and if they have a house cleaner come on a regular schedule.
Also make sure to ask how often they would like updates about the home and the pets. Some pet parents will want daily updates about their fur babies, and others are cool with the occasional check-in. Each pet parent is different, so make sure to ask.
You can send them messages about arriving packages or cute pet moments, or if you have any questions about the pets or the house that come up. Keeping an open line of communication will make life easier for everyone involved.
9. During the House Sit
During the house sit, stick to the schedule for the pets, the gardens, taking out the garbage and recycling, bringing in the mail or packages, and whatever the pet parent has asked of you, to the best of your abilities.
You’ll be adjusting to these new routines yourself, so we often like to put the tasks in our Google calendar with alarms so we’re on top of things.
Just find a way that works for you, maybe that’s a physical paper on the fridge or something like that.
We’ll often split up the duties or the chores. We do like to go on walkies with the dogs together, but we sometimes we split that up as well. Just make sure you are staying on top of the things that you agreed to do.
Keep It Clean
Keep the house clean and tidy. You don’t have to keep it pristine 100% of the time, you’re living there after all, and you’re a human. But keep it clean and pick up after yourself.
This is the third time we’re going to say this, because it’s really important: house sitting is NOT a free vacation. As a house sitter, you are there to take care of the home and the pets, and that should be your primary focus during the house sit.
Who’s Coming Over?
Be sure you know who will be coming to the house, like gardeners, housekeepers, pool cleaners, maintenance people, or family members coming to collect something.
If someone shows up unannounced, you should contact the pet parent to let them know.
We’ve done house sits where staff would come to work at the house on their regular schedules, like gardeners and cleaners.
In those situations, the pet parent either left us with the cash to pay the workers on a weekly basis, or had arranged payment for the duration of our stay in advance.
As a house sitter, you should not be responsible for paying for any of these services yourself. If you aren’t comfortable handling payments to workers, let the pet parent know, and they can arrange something else. Only agree to do things you are comfortable with.
House Etiquette
Remember that even though you’re living in the house, you’re still a guest. Don’t raid the cupboards and eat their food, unless you’ve been given permission to do so. Sometimes, pet parents will leave a few groceries, like vegetables and eggs and stuff like that for us.
Many pet parents have said we can use their oils and spices when we cook. Make sure to only use what’s been offered to you. And definitely don’t go into their liquor cabinet, because that’s definitely not part of the deal.
When the pet parents return, we like to buy a few groceries to help restock the home. Just simple things, like eggs and bread, so they don’t come home to a totally empty fridge. That’s entirely up to you, but that’s something we like to do at the end of a house sit.
With Trusted Housesitters, no money is changing hands, so none of this is required from the house sitter or pet parent. But we have found a lot of pet parents to be quite generous, and we like to reciprocate that and pay it forward.
Party Foul
This should go without saying, but here we go anyway: do not invite guests over without permission from the pet parent.
It may be fine with some pet parents for you to have guests or even have people stay overnight, but you absolutely need to ask the pet parent first and respect the answer they give you.
Be respectful of the pet parent’s spaces. If there are parts of the home they ask you not to go into, then stay out of those areas.
Don’t go snooping around in places you shouldn’t be snooping. Treat their things and their home the way you would want your own home to be treated.
10. Get 5-Star Reviews Every Time
After you complete a house sit, make sure you get a review from the pet parent! Five-star reviews are your golden ticket to getting future house sits. Here are some of the best ways to ensure you get five stars every time.
Stay in Communication
First, be communicative and reliable during the sit. Send the pet parentupdates about the home and the pets as often as they want, and keep them in the loop if there is anything amiss at the house.
Even if something breaks, whether it’s your fault or not, it’s better to be in good communication with the pet parentthan not and let them know as soon as possible.
Clean, Clean, Clean
Second, as the sit draws to a close, clean the heck out of the house. You want to leave the house cleaner than when you found it.
If possible, throw the bedsheets in the wash before the pet parents return and make the bed with fresh sheets.
We do this at the end of every sit, pet parents do notice and have even included it in their reviews.
A little Something Extra
Third, do a little something extra for the pet parent on their return. This can be as simple as writing them a card, buying flowers, or more elaborate things like buying some groceries or preparing them a meal.
None of that is necessary, of course, but these kind gestures are always appreciated.
Review Time
Once the sit is over, write your review and let the pet parent know. This will usually prompt them to write their review if they haven’t already.
Trusted Housesitters reviews work the same way as Airbnb’s. No one can see their review until both are written, or 14 days have passed, whichever comes first.
Ready to join Trusted Housesitters? Click here to get 30% off any Trusted Housesitters membership with the code AFFNPLH26
Big Finish
And there you have it, ten tips to help you be a successful house sitter! If you would like to learn more, read our other articles about house sitting and check out our Ultimate House Sitting Guide. And if you have any questions about house sitting, please leave a comment.
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