The majority of our housing as digital nomads has been through providing house sitting services to others and I felt like posting a series of articles about the subject was in order.
What in the world made you decide to house sit for people?
When we sold our house, I started reading blogs on living the digital nomad life and came across many mentions of van life, hostels and house sitting. Exhaustive research led me to understand that in most instances hostel living was not going to be for us, van life sounds fun for short term, but house sitting sounded too good to be true. So, on a trip to visit family we tried it out with a short last-minute sit and were hooked.
We realized that house sitting could fill two needs for us and help others out at the same time. For us, an opportunity to have pets in our lives, which is a luxury when you move every month and a nice place to stay that feels like home (because it is). For homeowners, the knowledge that their pet is at home and being taken care of just as if they were home, and the safety of not having the house sit empty while traveling.
What exactly is house sitting?
House sitting is staying in someone’s home to keep it and its contents safe while homeowners are away. For most it also includes keeping pets or farm animals safe and well cared for as well.
Is it easy to become a house sitter?
After much research and checking out all the options for finding housesitting gigs, we settled on Trusted House Sitters and have been able to find a plethora of places to stay through the platform. THS comes with a bonus that with a referal code, we get some free services and the new person gets a great discount. Recent changes have made it more challenging to get sits, as they limit applications for a sit to 5 and then they close the sit. I have read that this is a problem for homeowners and sitters alike. We will start looking at some of the other options as our membership comes closer to an end if this is still in place or starts to making finding good sits a challenge.
How to get that very first sit?
Most house sitters will say that getting the first sit is the hardest since you won’t have any reviews for owners to read. To combat this, you can get outside references and post them on the site and definitely apply for sits that are close to home where that first person can meet you beforehand (this is similar to what we did). One last tip: apply for a sit that doesn’t have any applicants in a less desirable location or season. These are often harder to fill.
Why does it cost money to join many house-sitting sites?
There are options to become a paid house sitter, though many of the services like TrustedHousesitters.com are built on the idea of exchange of services. Homeowners give you a home to stay in and you give them the security of keeping their home and pets safe.
The money you pay to some of the house-sitting sites covers things like advertising, screening and often even a background check. I figure that the annual fee is easily covered with the savings of rent or hotel in the first sit.
I am excited to tell you more about house sitting including some of the downsides, how we get the good sits, the benefits and of course some of the downsides to this lifestyle. Stay tuned if this intrigues you.
Living Detached 
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