So, you want to try house sitting?

Whether you're thinking of doing this full time, for a holiday, to spend time with other peoples pets, or as a way to get regular breaks from your housemates you have to appreciate that it's a big responsibility with risks involved. It's a big step to go from your comfort zone to living life in strangers homes and sorting out your personal logistics. It's worth dipping your toes in first and testing the waters to decide if it's for you.

An easy first step is to try offering your newly inspired house sitting services to friends and family. It's not only a nice thing to do for them, but means you get to try out the lifestyle in a more familiar setting. There’s also the added bonus that they can provide your first all important house sitting references! If after a couple of stays you decide it's not for you then fair play. But if you love it and want to do more then feel free to keep reading for more insights on getting yourself established as a fully fledged professional house sitter. 

Everyone's logistics are different, for example accomodation in between sits, so we won't be going into the nitty gritty detail of whether you should be traveling with your own cleaning kit or spice rack but we hope this provides enough of an insight to give you an idea of what's involved and some confidence moving forward.

It’s worth keeping in mind that for some reason it’s called house sitting but this is basically pet sitting as 99.9% of house sits have animals involved. Many homeowners will view the home secondary to their animals well-being and happiness.

Once you decide on your website to use, creating a profile is about being honest and personable. The homeowner needs to identify with you, whether that’s through fun pictures or finding a commonality in your profile. 

For your pictures, try and choose ones that show off your personality in appropriate ways. Love kayaking? Animals? Nature? Just out and about loving life? Great, go find those pics! Just make sure it’s only you and not all of your friends/family included. Perhaps don’t include the one swigging from a bottle of vodka at that new years eve party, either. Make sure they’re of decent quality, aka any post-2015 phone, and not a picture taken with a kodak disposable in 1995 or as if the photographer was doing a drive-by. I know, it sounds daft to say so, but believe me when I say we’ve seen some shockers.

For the bio you need to be personable but not rambling. Try to keep things short while mentioning your experience, preferred locations, desired durations of housesits, and being crystal clear on what your experience is. Don’t go overselling your love of dogs only to end up in over your head looking after a herd of some pedigree show dogs due to fly out to crufts.

I’d strongly recommend splitting your profile into a few short paragraphs. Start off introducing yourself, where you’re from, a couple of passions/hobbies, what you do for work, what brought you to house sitting and what your goals are. This can then flow on nicely to your experience so far in terms of home types and durations of stays you’re interested in. Don’t go listing every house sit of the last 10 years in great detail (yes, we’ve seen this..) and keep it easy. For example, there’s no use detailing how you’ve looked after a 2.75 acre farm with every animal under the sun when you can just say lifestyle block and farm animals.

It’s worth dedicating a paragraph to some relevant experience such as whether you’ve got any awesome DIY skills, used to living off grid, or looked after any pools, vegetable patches, greenhouses and specific animals. Ensure you mention any restrictions you have, eg must have off street parking or only interested in non-smoking homes. If you use Kiwi House Sitters you can define your locations and some restrictions without mentioning this in your profile as well which saves some time. It’s not just about restrictions either so mention anything else you can bring to the table like being very flexible with the start and end dates for example.

More often than not someone places an advert and you are free to apply, however it's not uncommon for homeowners to contact you first if they like the look of your profile. While it's very flattering, don't just say yes because you feel inclined to. If you don’t think it's for you, can’t make the dates work, or just don’t get a good feeling for the sit then politely decline. Particularly if it's for a longer duration as you don’t want to be stuck somewhere you won't enjoy.

The odds of being contacted to look after a beachfront mansion at the height of summer, in the middle of “cheap and awesome events town”, are slim to sweet FA… but not outside the realm of possibility. We got an incredible home in our dream location within a week of starting here so sometimes you just need to take that leap of faith. If you’re just getting started on your house sitting journey then you’ll likely need to work your way up to these by collecting some glowing references along the way. 

But don’t knock the standard suburban home, or city apartment. These make up the majority of the house sitter demand, and they have everything you should need for a comfortable stay. Plus it's important to remember that housesitting is about so much more than the place you’ll be staying in. There’s a whole world to explore and things to experience, and each new location will bring something awesome to the table. Even the ones that you don’t end up enjoying, you learn from for future sits.  

For us it's having use of a vehicle. We own an RV and while we love her dearly, we learnt quickly that she’s not ideal for just nipping to the shops, particularly for those rural locations. So if we can’t use a car it's pretty much a no straight off the bat. 

Your non-negotiables will tend to be circumstance specific. Internet limitations if you work from home or love to game. Use of multiple bedrooms if you are house sitting as a family. Stating you don’t do gardening if it's something you can’t stand. 

Once you’re ready to take the plunge of doing this for internet strangers it might be good to do a few short term sits first to get the hang of what to expect and being used to living in someone else's house…because it does feel odd at first. Starting with a few long weekends is a good way of testing the waters, especially with different animals. If you’ve never owned a dog before then I’d avoid jumping into a month long house sit with more than 1 for example.

Staying close to an area you know is another good way to ease yourself in. We found it’s just intrinsically less stressful when you’re in familiar surroundings.

At the same time, don’t be worried about trying something new. This can be a great way of finding out your preferred house sit set up. You might start with a preconceived idea of your perfect housesit, but be open to new experiences. We always thought we’d have a preference to be near the cities but after the first few months of trying out a few different setups we soon realised how much we loved being out in the middle of nowhere. You might find you love the busy city lifestyle, quiet countryside, lots of animals, or none at all.  

When it comes to booking in your first sit with internet strangers there are some simple unwritten rules to follow. You might consider most of these as plain common sense, but they’re worth noting. We’ve heard a few anecdotes on our travels from homeowners about their former house sitters and have been amazed at some of the poor standards endured - luckily they’re a minority…but still. Here’s a few characteristics and tips you need to either know or are able to learn very quickly in order to be a house sitter. 

Be Honest: If something breaks under your watch just come clean. House sitting is a high trust situation and it's the ethical human thing to do. If you try to cover up mistakes and breakages you’ll often just make it worse and it’ll be really really obvious. Small ticket things like plates and cups can happen from time to time, but with the bigger things like appliances it's understandably more worrying. 

Home owners should be informing their insurance providers if they have house sitters to make sure their property and any vehicles you might use are covered while you’re occupying the house. Always make sure that they do this. If you’re feeling particularly risk averse you can always get your own indemnity insurance. Luckily we've never felt the need to get this so can't recommend any good insurers but ringign up any large insurer for advice should bear fruit. Protip: Fire extinguishers, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are inexpensive and easy to transport in case of emergency. Do yourself a favour and protect not only yourself but also potentially save a property by buying these for your travels.

Be Respectful: You’re representing fellow housesitters and your demographic. Often a homeowner will say you can help yourself to food in the house, especially any leftover food in the fridge…that’s fair game since it will need using up. By all means if they say you can use something then go for it, but be mindful. It’s not cricket to deplete their freezer or pantry of all the food and drink you fancy. And if you do that, be a sport and replace it. 

It's also common you’ll see house sitting ads requesting older people only, as there’s a preconceived idea that younger people aren’t as responsible or will spend the whole time throwing parties and raiding their alcohol cupboards. It's a stereotype, and not necessarily true…but you do hear stories of it happening.

Be Mindful: It's someone's home not a hotel. Treat it like you would your own. Don't smash the heat pump on 24/7, take excessively long showers, use the dryer when it's perfectly sunny outside, etc, just because they aren't your bills to pay. Your stay will be sure to leave a sour taste in their month if they're hit in the pockets with massive utility bills. 

Have Standards: Leaving a property as clean and tidy as you found it is the bare minimum you should be aiming for. If you want those glowing reviews then you can always go the extra mile to really impress. Be a good listener during the handover conversation and pick up on cues for particularly sentimental areas where you can really impress with just a little effort and you should be rewarded with a fantastic review. 

Be Organised: Emergency situations happen and can’t always be avoided but if you accidentally double book, overcommit on the travel, or forget about that family thing you said you would attend on the other side of the country and end up having to cancel then you’ll be really f*****g up someone’s holiday. We use a shared google calendar to ensure there’s never any double commitments, especially when first starting out and you could be travelling all over Auckland for 2 months straight.

Make sure you can get to the house sit for the handover and start date as well as leaving enough time for your final clean before they arrive home and you start your next job. Once you get into a routine you can start considering additional steps such as offering airport drop offs/pickups to ensure you get the invaluable glowing reviews and references.

Take Notes: It might feel a bit weird following the homeowner round with a pen and paper, but there’s a lot of information to absorb when doing an in person handover. The homeowner should have written a document covering the basics, but often things come up during the walk through of the property that they may not have remembered to write down, so it’s important you do…or you will forget. It's also good practice to create a checklist of points you want to cover before the owners leave so you’re not having to bother them within the first 48 hours of their holiday.

Don’t Make Assumptions: If there’s a decision to be made that affects the house or their pets it's best just to ask first. You’ve heard the saying it's better to ask for permission rather than forgiveness? That applies. Usually the homeowner will tell you they want to be contacted first if there is any kind of emergency, such as an unexpected vet visit required, but cover yourself by also asking what they would want you to do if something were to happen and for one reason or another they weren’t contactable straight away.

Make Your Exit Strategy: Towards the end of your stay you need to put aside some time to clean, tidy and pack up your belongings. Our advice is however long you think that will take, double it. Best to be finished up early than running round with the vacuum cleaner and a half packed suitcase as the homeowners are pulling into the driveway. Find out what time the homeowners are due to be back so you can plan accordingly.

Most are fine with you leaving before they arrive home, but be sure to leave a courtesy message of anything they might need to know, or even just a list of non-urgent things you’ve not bothered about such as replacing a random battery or replacing bedding and towels so they know they don’t need to do it. Protip: Travel with your own king size bedding and when you wash their bedding during your stay you can use your own so it’s super quick to replace with theirs when you leave. Avoiding a large load of washing and remaking a bed at 6am for the early returnees is an absolute lifesaver! 

Finally, be sure to follow up and ask if everything was ok, if they have any questions about anything that might have happened while they’ve been away, and request that all important review/reference. Your future house sits rely on these. We always say we're available via email for any queries after the sit has ended as you can't always guarantee you'll put someones favourite frying pan back in the right cupboard afterall!