How To Save Money By House and Pet Sitting

What is House and Pet Sitting?

House and pet sitting is when you live in someone’s house while they are away, typically to take care of their pets and to make their house look lived in. However, there are places where you have no pets and you just take care of the house. It’s a simple concept overall, like an AirBnB with some responsibilities. You do get to stay for free and we have been lucky to have food, chocolate, and wine left for us to use during our stays. Several hosts/owners told us we could have any food or drinks in the house and to make ourselves at home. So, house and pet sitting is a good option for a place to stay.

There is a 15% discount available until March 31, 2025.

Who is house-sitting good for?

This might be for you if you like pets and can do some basic tasks as needed. We’ve had dogs for many years, so that is our preferred option. If you are a cat, fish, reptile, or livestock person, there are options for you as well. If you no longer have pets and want to enjoy them without the added full-time responsibility (or costs), you can get your fur fix. There are a lot of sits with cats. However, I am allergic to cats, so they are not one of the options I select when searching.

For instance, I am writing this post from a house near where we live in Atlanta. They have 3 dogs, 2 birds, 2 spiders, 3 goats, 10 or so chickens (can’t see all at the same time to count), and 2 rabbits. This is a great sit even though there are a lot of animals. The routine takes about 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night. The dogs have a fenced-in area to play, so no walking on a leash. Considering there are 20+ animals, it is super easy, and it only took a day or two to get the routine down.

Who is house-sitting not good for?

Probably the most important reason it isn’t for you is that you are not a pet person. If you plan on doing a lot of activities away from the house, it might not work with the schedule of feeding, walking, and other required tasks. That is not to say you can’t go explore for a few hours a day, you have to remember you have responsibilities at the house. Depending on the requirements, you may be able to go out for 5 or more hours, others maybe an hour or so. It does depend on the owner’s (and pet’s) requirements.

The requirements are laid out in the listing and welcome guide. You must confirm any important requirements as the listing could have outdated info. It might be too restrictive if you plan on traveling for only a week. However, you can probably still find a place that works for you.

Why House/Pet Sit While Traveling?

This gives you an affordable place to stay (FREE) in an area you want to visit. If you want to visit an expensive location such as the UK, Scandinavia, western Europe, or other areas, you could save a lot of money if you supplement your lodging costs with some house-sits. A week in the UK will cost you more than $700 easily for lodging. Doing house sits can reduce that cost drastically or completely. Also, you will be living like a local in their house, with their pets, and in their community. A much better option than a small hotel room in my opinion.

How Do I Get Started?

First, you need to sign up on the house/pet-sitting website. It does have a small annual fee to handle the background checks, running the platform, insurance, etc. Several subscription levels are available depending on your requirements. You can sign up to be a host if you have pets as well. Once you sign up and complete your basic profile, you should get some references from previous house/pet sitting for friends, family, or neighbors.

Initially, we applied for several house sits in the UK on our 4-month trip. However, all were rejected due to being new and not having any reviews. It is recommended that you start by doing several local house sits to build your reviews and get a feel for what might be required.  We started with 3 local weekend house-sits. These were close enough to home (less than an hour away) that we could run home if we forgot something important.

We just received a request/invite from our 2nd house-sit to do another weekend for them, we applied. Unfortunately, we were too late. This would have been great, a repeat sit will help boost our trustworthiness for future sits. A good option for your initial house sits is to do weekend getaway trips and try it out. Last-minute sits are usually easier to get as the owners are more likely to choose someone local who can be there quickly without the need to travel long distances. Fast forward a month from when I originally wrote this post. We have just completed another house sit near us, this time with 30 animals on 10 acres. It is a short 3-day weekend sit, so it shouldn’t be too bad. The best part is it is 10 miles from our house and the location was in the wealthiest area in Georgia (USA). Therefore, you won’t be slumming it. Also, if you can handle 30+ animals, a dog or two should be easy. It looks good for our profile.

Where Will You Stay?

You can filter your search results to homes, apartments, or both. It could be in a small apartment or a multi-million dollar mansion on the beach. You could be in a French chateau with hundreds of acres or a studio apartment in a city center. Some places have specific rooms for you to use and others will be in the owner’s area depending on the size of the house or apartment. Again, you can filter the search results to meet your needs including the use of their car, public transportation availability, etc. Remember, you are staying in a house or an apartment for FREE versus a small hotel room for money.

You may find that the requirements need to be adjusted to fit your needs. We ran into an issue with not having a workspace available, the listing showed it had one. However, the office area was locked and not available to sitters. That error caused some issues, it was only for a day so we managed. So you have to confirm any important requirements as the listing could have outdated info. Similar to an AirBnB, read the details and ask questions.

How Do I Get People to Watch My Pets?

You can sign up to be a host via the same website and be either a sitter, or both sitter and host. If you have ever used boarding while on vacation, you know it is not cheap. A week can easily cost $400 or more per pet. Overall, it is the best of both worlds for owner and sitter.

Conclusion

House sits won’t work for every trip. However, it allows you to reduce lodging costs and relax in a nicer place than you could normally justify or afford. The annual fee can easily be recovered on your first sit (depending on the sit). Remember, you are getting free housing (and possibly more) in exchange for your services. Would I do house-sits all the time? No, but it is a great option if you want to break up the routine or you need a place to stay for a few days, a week, or more.

Treat their house and pets as you would your own or better. We leave the house cleaner than when we arrived, it has helped with 5-star reviews. Simple things like washing the linens and folding them go a long way. Most owners want to do a face-to-face interview, usually via video. However, we did meet several of the owners and pets in person before our sits.

There is one major difference to an Airbnb or hotel, if you don’t like it, you can’t just leave. You are on the hook unless you can get the host to find a replacement sitter. Depending on the circumstances, that will most likely result in a negative review and hurt your chances to get another sit.