Have you ever heard of house sitting and pet sitting? It’s a great way to get free accommodation. Not just free by using points (everyone should get that easily, too), but rather really completely free: no points, no cash. It’s another very interesting pro tip to travel for less, which you should know about. But it’s not for everyone.
I’ve had the chance to try house sitting and pet sitting 4 times — to save on lodging costs around the world and to keep my money, my Marriott points, and my bank points for the rest of my 11.5 months of travel per year as a digital nomad.
It’s hard to find a better deal than free lodging. House sitting without pets exists, but I’ll talk about the easiest way to house sit, which almost always involves pets.
Here’s what you need to know about house sitting and pet sitting.
What are house sitting and pet sitting?
House sitting and pet sitting is a bit like staying in a free Airbnb with the owner’s animals — the best of both worlds, in my opinion. In short, it’s an exchange of services: you take care of one or more pets in exchange for staying in a home for free.
Here are the caveats:
- You need to find an available house sitting opportunity
- You need to be somewhat flexible
- On either dates or destinations
- You shouldn’t do this if you don’t love animals
- This should go without saying
It’s a great tip if you’re traveling on a budget, retired, looking for a new experience, or simply an animal lover. After trying hotels, Airbnbs, hostels, camping, and Couchsurfing, I am glad I experimented with this new way to travel.
What is the best way to do house sitting and pet sitting?
Here’s what you need to know:
- My own experiences were with Trusted Housesitters
- The largest platform for house sitting (19,000+ reviews)
- More house sitting listings than all other sites combined
- You can create a free account to explore options
- It’s completely free to do that
- There’s a fee of $169/year to be allowed to book
- But then, all accommodations are always free
- And you get as many stays as you can find
- That’s the price of just 1 night in a hotel
- In expensive countries where everyone always goes to
- There’s no guarantee an owner will choose you
- But you really need just 1 free stay to break even
- There’s a money-back guarantee
- If you don’t get accepted after 5 applications
- Other premium plans exist if you want more features
- You can also list your own home, of course
All stays are completely free and stays are unlimited. Their plan really is an amazing deal! Their fee is a great way to filter out those who are not as serious.
Basically, Trusted Housesitters is a platform to connect those who want someone to take care of their pet with those who want free accommodation.
In my case, in my year of membership, I got free lodging for:
- 8 days in Dubai
- 21 days in Sydney
- 3 days on the Gold Coast
- 8 days in Stockholm
That’s a pretty good deal for just $169 total ($85/person with my girlfriend), just over $2 per night per person. I’ll share a detailed post about my experiences soon.
How does house sitting work on Trusted Housesitters?
Here’s exactly how you can get started:
- Create a free account on Trusted Housesitters
- Fill out your profile as thoroughly as possible
- Look for available housesits
- Activate a plan to be able to book
- Apply to as many housesits as you wish
I share a detailed step-by-step below.
What types of house sitting opportunities are available?
You can find anything on Trusted Housesitters: from a house in Los Angeles with 3 dogs to a ranch in Montana with horses, or from a small apartment in Seoul with a chameleon to a large apartment in Australia with an axolotl and 2 cats (that last one’s a true story of mine)!
As for the length, it varies a lot. Some people need a housesitter for a weekend, others for a week, and others for a month or more.
To give you another example, someone from Ontario contacted me to take care of his dozen llamas for 2 weeks (but I wasn’t near Canada for those dates). There’s really everything!
You can even try it out near your home if you want; there are listings in Canada!
Which house sitting plans are offered?
You have 3 options if you want to house sit with Trusted Housesitters.
The basic plan for $169 gets you unlimited stays.
That’s what I chose, but you can also pay a bit more to get extra features.
The standard plan for $50 more ($219) gets you:
- Free video calls with vets while house sitting
- Instant alerts for unlimited saved searches
- Dedicated member support
- Accident & 3rd-party liability plan
That’s just $4/month more if you value those benefits. They are mostly to save you time and hassles, if you prefer paying for convenience rather than saving money.
The premium plan for $339 includes the most perks:
- All the above
- Premium badge on your profile
- Sit cancelation plan
- 2 VIP airport lounge passes
It’s easy to get free access to VIP airport lounges as a Canadian, so that’s not that useful. But if the badge helps you stand out and get more sits, that alone could be worth it.
If you also want to list your own home for housesits, the basic combined plan is $259.
What is the money-back guarantee?
Trying Trusted Housesitters is risk-free: if you do not confirm any housesits within 14 days of making your 5th application as a sitter, you can get a refund with no strings attached.
How to find a house sitting job?
Trusted Housesitters, like other similar websites, is a review-based platform. That means it can be hard to find a house with a brand-new profile and no good reviews. But don’t worry, it’s still possible.
Here are some tips to help you succeed.
Tips to find a house sitting opportunity
Being flexible is always the key to traveling for less; the more aspects you’re flexible on, the more money you’ll save on travel. It’s really that simple.
It’s even more true for house sitting. And as for all trips, the most important things to be flexible on are destinations and dates. Either one, but both are obviously even better.
Be flexible on destinations
Some destinations have more available opportunities than others on Trusted Housesitters. After 80+ countries, I’ve never been to one that I didn’t enjoy, so just be flexible on destinations if you want to save money.
There’s a map view to help you plan out your house-sitting trip.
You can also search for full countries to see all the listings if you want to narrow it down afterward.
Be flexible on dates
Then, with house sitting, flexibility on dates is arguably even more important. You have to adapt to the homeowners’ departure dates. You can also post the dates when you are available, and an owner can contact you.
I recommend searching without dates to see all the options and then trying to find dates that work.
I was able to find and book my 5 house sitting opportunities easily (the 4 I mentioned and another I explain below), at least after the first one. Of course, I was very flexible.
Since lodging is such a huge part of a trip’s budget, it can be worth paying a bit more for flights to get a completely free stay. We have teased 30+ tips to save on flights, but the best one for expensive flights is using travel rewards of the more lucrative type that can save you a lot of money.
How to be chosen for a house sitting opportunity?
For an owner to choose you, you have to know how to portray that you are trustworthy. After all, they will be relying on you to take care of their precious home and pets.
It’s good to have reviews on your Trusted Housesitters profile. For the first reviews, you can ask a landlord, employer, colleague, friend, or family member to write on your profile.
In addition, don’t hesitate to mention all your relevant experience in your profile. Write everything that could make you an ideal candidate: pets of your own, house owners, farm experience, or volunteer work.
If you travel as a couple or with a friend, you can also combine your experiences on one profile.
Getting a first house-sitting experience is key because then your profile will have a review from another homeowner on the website, and others will trust you more easily. The first house sit is obviously the hardest to get, and that’s normal: you’re new, and it’s harder for owners to trust you.
After you build your credibility as a reliable house sitter with 1 stay review on the site, getting “contracts” will become much easier.
How to maximize house sitting?
Choosing affordable destinations is one of the reasons I’m able to travel for 11.5 months per year for not so much more than what most people sadly pay for a few trips (along with earning a lot of travel rewards, of course).
There are so many countries where accommodation easily costs $20 per night, and those countries are just as amazing — if not more amazing. Our accommodation prices feature includes the first few guides with many concrete examples.
So, if you want to be strategic, you should try to use house sitting when you want to visit expensive destinations, like I did in Sweden, Australia, and Dubai.
(I actually also had a full MONTH of free lodging booked in super-expensive Hawaii for 2020, but we all know what happened then!)
My 4 pet-sitting experiences allowed me to travel to places where lodging (and everything else) is not cheap!
My own experiences with house sitting
I’ll soon share a detailed post about my 4 experiences with house sitting. Join 100,000+ savvy Canadian travelers who receive all our pro tips and deals to travel for less by signing up for our free newsletter.
In short, using Trusted Housesitters was perfect for me that year, as I was completely flexible as a digital nomad.
I haven’t used it since, though. That’s because I don’t have as much flexibility with my new girlfriend — this year, we had an entire 12-month itinerary planned out way ahead. We also try to travel to more off-the-beaten-path destinations where there wouldn’t be many house sitting opportunities (like our 4 months in West Africa in 2024). Also, she’s American, meaning she has even more travel rewards than I do, so we have a ton of points for free lodging and flights.
Step-by-step: How to get started with house sitting?
Since I already have an account, I asked Andrew, Flytrippers’ other co-founder, to create an account to take screenshots of the signup steps.
1. Go to Trusted Housesitters.
We highly recommend the 1Password tool for security and simplicity. It protects your information and identity, and you won’t ever have to remember a password or account number. We use it ourselves, and it has changed our lives.
2. Click on the purple “Join now” button in the top right.
3. Click on the “Choose sitter membership” button (or “Choose combined membership” if you also want to find a housesitter for your own place).
4. Fill out the form and click on the “Create my free account” button.
It’ll automatically take you to the membership page, but you don’t need to get one right away if you just want to search. You won’t be able to make a booking request until you get the plan, though.
5. Just click on the “Find a house sit” tab on the top left to get started.
6. Once you’re ready to join, you click the purple “Choose a plan” button in the top right at any time.
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Summary
If you love animals, Trusted Housesitters is perfect for you to travel on a budget! This is a very popular way to travel for those who are retired, but it is also accessible to anyone who has some flexibility on their travel dates or destinations.
What would you like to know about house sitting and pet sitting? Tell us in the comments below.
See the flight deals we spot: Cheap flights
Discover free travel with rewards: Travel rewards
Explore awesome destinations: Travel inspiration
Learn pro tricks: Travel tips
Featured image: My house sitting in Dubai, UAE (photo credit: Kevin Gagnon/Flytrippers)
