How I bagged my first housesit via trustedhousesitters.com
After a year of deliberation and being correctly teased/targeted by the accurate marketing campaigns of trustedhousesitter.com; I decided it was time to put my what I thought was a pipe dream of becoming a housesitter. I had decided to take a career break earlier that year and had planned to spend 6 months backpacking through South, Central and North America, however on the first day of my time off which started in Amsterdam, I got an unfortunate injury which meant that I was unable to backpack as planned - so needed to think outside of the box as I’d already rented out my apartment in London.
I will add here that I am aware that I was fortunate in the sense that I had time on my hands to be able to commit to this, which note is important that you are flexible for your first few house sits. There is lots of demand in terms of individuals who want to house sit so it’s important to stand out when applying for sits, I’ve included my helpful tips below to help you suceed!
Key takings that factored into my success at finding an amazing housesit:
Create a profile on trustedhousesitter.com. You can see my profile here for reference.
Contact friends / family / neighbours who you have house sat / pet sat for before and get them to give you a positive review of their experience of you as a housesitter.
Include photos of you and animals
If you have a professional profile (LinkedIn) or a solid social media (presence) that can convey you as a responsible adult, do include this, my ‘landlords’ mentioned to me that my LinkedIn caught their eye!
Send a friendly personal message to EVERY housesit that you are interested in. Note the details of their animals and the house and area and what they are looking for and relay that back to them in the message.
Apply for as many as possible! I must have applied for 20+ in one evening - with tailored messages to each individual. I kept an open mind and applied anywhere in a major city / state / province in North America.
Whilst I won’t divulge too many details on the house itself or the owners. I will say my first house sit experience so far has been absolutely incredible. My ‘landlords’ picked me up from Miami airport, which was 2 hours away from the city that I am staying in (Naples, Florida) gave me a 2-3 day induction to the area, took me for a food shop, out for a couple of meals and lunch and then essentially left me to my own accord in a mansion on the beach with their a for 3 months. In exchange for all of this, I was left to look after their beautiful home and their gorgeous cats - who were great company and I was able to get to work on my blog!
