If you want to have successful housesits in your Nomad Life as you travel the world, you’ll want to start housesitting in your home town before you leave your neighborhood. You can get reviews on record and make securing housesits in the future much easier by starting now on building your review portfolio.
We have housesat around the world for over five years, saving thousands and thousands of dollars along the way and meeting super pets and people. We use Trusted Housesitters to find our housesits (click our link here and save 25% with EATWALK25 code).
We started housesitting near our home before we left town. Below we give you some tips to securing good housesits which you will get based on your 5-star reviews.
We Saved $20,000 By Housesitting
We have been petsitting around the world for five years and have saved almost $20,000 in hotel fees. Watch our round-up video about how much it costs to travel the world full-time and what we’ve saved by housesitting.
Labradors, mutts, kitties, turtles, hamsters, lizards, snakes, poodles; we’ve had them all from London to Dublin, Mexico City to Paris. We’ve got pet best friends around the world all due to housesitting.
How is Housesitting Different than Petsitting?
What is petsitting? What is housesitting? We practice a form of housesitting/petsitting that is a mutual exchange of services between the homeowner and housesitter and does not involve any exchange of money. It’s a fair exchange of services where the homeowner, the petsitter, and the pets all have a win-win-win outcome.
No one pays anything but an annual membership to Trusted Housesitters. Not only is housesitting a nice way to bring lots of pets and comfort into your life, it’s a great way to save money when you travel. We explain housesitting and why we like it over Airbnb in this video.
We use the terms housesitting and petsitting synonymously, interchanging them all the time. Most of the time when we stay in someone else’s home and take care of their home, there are pets involved. But not always. You can certainly find housesits that don’t have pets.
Types of Housesits Available for Full-time Travelers
Depending on what we want to do in a location will determine what type of housesit we want to have. If we’re wanting to go-go-go, we’ll look for housesits that have no pets or maybe have a cat, a caged animal like a lizard or mouse, or perhaps a bird.
If we want to settle in, relax, write, and just live our lives, we like dogs. We like the routine of walking the dog in the morning and the evening, allowing us to enjoy the local area by day.
How to Get Your First Housesit
The system of housesitting at Trusted Housesitters works on a platform of reviews. The better and more reviewed you are, the easier it will be for you to get the better housesits. So how do you get your first review?
The secret to getting your first housesit is to do housesits in your home town. Sign up now for Trusted Housesitters, create your profile, and look for a housesit. Find something easy near your house. Maybe it’s a weekend sit only 10 miles away.
Explain in your application to the homeowner that you’re just starting out and that you’re trying to build your profile so that you can housesit around the world and save on your accommodation budget as you travel full-time. Read this post about how to make a good profile.
The Five Questions You Should Ask for Housesitting
Arrange a video chat to see if you’re a fit. In your conversation, you’ll want to ask a series of questions about the pets and home. There are many ways to ask the questions, but here are the five topics you really want to nail down in your interview.
And remember, the interview is always about the pets and whether you’re trustworthy or not.
- What is the pet’s schedule?
- Where does the pet sleep?
- Is the pet good on a lead?
- What are the dates the homeowner needs you?
- Where will you sleep?
These are not all the questions you will ask, but these five basic questions open up the conversation that gets to all the information you’ll need to make sure your first housesit is a success. Even if you and your partner will be housesitting together when you’re nomads, if you need to split up for the housesit, do so. Let your partner stay home with your current obligations, and you go off and do the housesit.
How to Have a Successful Housesit
To have a successful housesit, meet with the homeowner beforehand. This is a luxury you should take advantage of since you’re in town. Get a walkthrough of the house and pet’s needs, acquire the key, ease any concerns, then make plans for when you’ll actually arrive at the sit.
Get 5 Stars on Your Petsitting Review
Enjoy the sit, paying attention to the lists the homeowner will have left, and appropriately take and send pictures to the homeowner. When it’s time to leave, clean what you’ve used, always leaving it a bit better than when you found it. Watch this video for how to get 5 stars when you leave the sit.
After you’ve gotten your first review, and you can digest the feedback and the experience, apply to your next housesit. Try to get at least five under your belt before applying outside of your local area.
You should have a solid set of reviews, and when you apply to your distant housesits, reference your solid reviews.
Housesitting is a great way to keep pets in your life, increase your level of comfort when you travel, and reduce your housing expenses. Getting started is easy when you start close to home. Be sure to use our referral code (EATWALK25) at Trusted Housesitters to get a 25% discount on your membership.
Chris Englert, the Walking Traveler, believes walking is the platform for life. Wanderlusting since the age of 5, she’s since traveled all 50 US states and 62 countries. Chris shares her love of walking while traveling via blogs, books, and presentations. A natural storyteller, she invites you along as she explores the world, one walk at a time.
Currently, Chris and her husband, Steve, travel the world, full-time as nomads, with just their two carry-ons. They’ve been traveling since May, 2021.