Would you pay someone to house sit?
We’re going to be gone for a month this summer, and reality has started to seep in around the edges of my excitement. I can hardly wait for the trip – we’re going to Tokyo, Kyoto, Paris, and Barcelona – but I am slowly realizing that I’ve got a lot to do before we leave. A LOT.
One of those things on my list is to find someone to stay in our house while we are away. The main reason for this is that we live in a weird neighborhood. Weird, because it is a lovely place to live, but it also happens to be a hot spot for robberies and burglaries. So I don’t want to take any chances by leaving our house empty while we are gone.
Did you know that people pay for house sitters? Somehow I wasn’t aware of this phenomenon. I reached out to a few friends who have college-age babysitters, and none of them were interested for less than $30 a day. Seriously. Doesn’t that remind of you the famous Linda Evangelista quote: “We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.”
So yeah, we didn’t want to pay someone $1,000 to stay in our house while we were gone. That just seems like the funds are flowing the wrong way. And really, we just wanted to do this for free. Doesn’t anyone do that anymore?
I have a smart friend who gave me some great advice: FaceBook. Of course. FaceBook. It totally worked. Within an hour, we had friends from all over the country practically beating down our door to house sit. For free.
Problem solved. Thanks, FaceBook.
Have you ever paid anyone to house sit? Would you do it again?
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We pay someone to house and dog sit. It comes to about the same cost as kenneling our dogs and we have someone getting our mail and keeping an eye on our house as well. Win-win. =)
Next time try a home exchange, it does not have simultaneous
I’ve given friends gift cards or a small gift for watching my apartment before, but other than that, not a daily ‘wage’.
I could see paying for house sitting if you had pets that needed to be fed and walked or if you had a large garden that needed to be watered frequently. Or, if you are requiring them to stay at your house all the time but since I’m guessing they could still go about their business but sleep at your house instead of theirs, it does seem silly to pay $30/day.
I always ask my neighbor to just check-in at my house every day when I am away. We do this for each other all the time when one of us go on vacation.
Another great option is to use mindmyhouse.com or housecarers.com (there are others). It is free for the homeowner to join and in most cases the house sitter does not charge a fee. We have done several sits through them of up to 3 months.
We do pay someone to stay at our house, but we also have 3 small dogs that we want someone to spend time with. When we went to New Zealand for 3 weeks, we sent the dog to stay with a friend. We did pay the neighbour kid to water the garden.
House-sitting for someone is a service — so why shouldn’t the house-sitter be compensated? I realize that staying in and watching someone’s house is not a hard job ( unless there are many duties/chores involved), but it is still a valuable service that gives the homeowner peace of mind during his/her absence. The mail gets retrieved, plants get watered, trash gets taken in/out and lights turned on/off; plus, the sitter’s presence in the house deters would-be burglars.
So, to me, the homeowner is getting a valuable service, but for some reason, many people think this valuable service should be done for free. And if there are pets involved, then that adds to the benefits: pets get to stay in their home environment ( no kenneling), they get individualized attention, feeding schedules/walks, etc.
But this is all supposed to be for free? No way!
And the house-sitter still has to lug whatever belongings they’ll need to the home-sitocation, lug it all back when the assignment is over, and possibly add to their commute time if the house-sit location is further away from their job, school, etc.