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Housesitting Resources

If you are serious about becoming a housesitter or using the services of a housesitter while you travel, we have several excellent resources on this site.

The first is our Free Housesitting Report. The second is the Keys to Housesitting Success, and the third is The Housesitter’s Edge.

Other Housesitting resources include the A to Z, step by step, paint by numbers guide we wrote with the folks at International Living:

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There’s a powerful secret that a few savvy travellers know about. A way you can stay in exotic locales all over the world… for free. It’s a secret “back door” into luxurious stays in places that normally cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a week… but which, when you apply this secret, can be yours at zero expense. Find out more…

The Housesitting Websites:

We have been housesitting full time since April of 2012, this has allowed us to save an average of $30, 000 a year in accommodation costs, while staying in amazing homes and exotic locations.

The two websites we have used to secure the majority of our assignments are:

house-carers

Click here to Find a Housesitter

Click here to Become a Housesitter.

The other site we have obtained assignments from is:

trustedhousesitters

Trusted Housesitters

Probably the site with the most international house sitting opportunities (and the most competition as a sitter). We do regularly land sits with this platform.

Frankly THS can be a very frustrating platform to use for sitters and homeowners, as they are constantly changing the user interface, as well as their “algorithm”

Recent changes (such as pausing applicants at 5 for any given assignment) has in our opinion morphed the platform from one focusing on the merit of the applicants to one of a ‘pay to play’ model. At the time of writing homeowners have not been made aware of these changes.

The platform gives instant notifications to those willing to pay for the premium tier membership (read most expensive). If are new to housesitting you can use this to your advantage.

This combined with the application cap penalizes those with a basic membership, as well as those who happen to be in different time zones.

 

Other Country Specific Websites

These websites focus their listings to one specific country. They have house/petsitter listings in specific countries and cover Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the U.K.

Australia:

US and Canada:

New Zealand:

United Kingdom & Europe:

Pet First Aid Training:

Put yourself ahead of your housesitting competitors and gain confidence in your pet care ability. Many organizations offer courses in Pet First Aid including PetTech, Dogsafe Canine First Aid, St. John Ambulance in Canada and American Red Cross

If classes are not available near you may consider either distance learning certification with Walks ‘N’ Wags Pet First Aid or online Pet First Aid Training Certification Programs such as The Pet Professional Guild or E-Training for Dogs.

House Swapping Sites

Sabbatical Homes
Free or $20 for non academics per year. Also lists Home Rentals, Home Exchanges, & House Sharing

Intervac
70 Euro per year

Home Link
$89 USD per year or $39 for limited membership. Can list a second home for $25 USD

Home Exchange
$119 USD per year

Love Home Swap
$240, $276 or $408 USD er year depends on level of membership

Knok
$29 USD to join plus $495 for one trip or $79/month

Home Link
115 GBP per year

Aussie House Swap
$65 AUD per year

General Travel Resources

Travel Advisories, Travel Warnings  and Country Information:

Before heading off to new countries – do your homework first. The following government websites give general information that may affect your personal safety and security in the country you are thinking of exploring.

Visa Requirements:

Several  sites provide information about country visa requirements.

Visa HQ lists visa requirements based on your citizenship

Project Visa – has visa and embassy information for all countries with links to foreign government websites

Staying Healthy:

To ensure you are not going to run into any  potential health issues overseas you may consider consulting the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) websites for health advice.

2014 Yellow Book Home | Travellers’ Health | CDC

Destinations | Travellers’ Health | CDC

Climate Information:

Climate-zone.com provides climate advice including average maximum and minimum temperatures, average rain days and average snow days for all regions of the world.

Money Matters

Costs of Living Abroad:

Before heading off to that wonderful sounding housesit in Switzerland you need to understand the cost of living there- will you be able to live within your budget? Here are a few sites to help you get an idea of what you need to budget.

Numbeo.com provides crowd sourced cost of living information right down to the cost of a bottle of beer. The site also allows you to easily compare the cost of living between two places.

BudgetYourTrip.com this is an other crowd sourced data base which is compiled by travellers who use the site. These average costs are based on multiple categories and give the user a starting point to determine their own budgets. Especially useful for calculating travelling costs getting to and from housesitting assignments.

XE Currency Converter – Live Rates is a currency converter to assist with exchange rates.

Saving Money on Travel:

Cruising for less: Getting from A to B on a relocation cruise (or even jumping ship on a regular cruise) can be a very economical, not to mention, enjoyable way of travelling. Popular resources for finding deals on cruise ships include Repositioningcruise.com and  Vacationstogo.com.

We have used positioning cruises to get to Panama. We have also taken a cruise and then jumped ship during the cruise (this was cheaper than flying from A to B). For more information see The Travel Secret Cruise lines Don’t Want you to Know!   

Freighter travel is an alternative way to get across an ocean or even circumnavigate the globe. They are not super cheap, typical costs run about $100/ day per person. United States booking sites include:  Freightercruises.com and Travltips.com

Saving on Airfare: A good starting place is Flyertalk.com, a forum dedicated to sharing tips, tricks and insider advice on reducing air travel costs. Use Yapta.com to see if you are entitled to a refund if the price drops after you purchase a ticket.

European Short Term Automobile Lease If you are a North American resident you can participate in a lease buy-back program provided by Europebycar.com . This is a good way to get a set of wheels for less than it costs to rent (and without all the restrictions imposed on European car rentals). Read more… 

Finding Low Cost Accommodations:

It can be challenging to set up back to back housesits and there may be times when you need to get your own digs. You may also want to spend more time in a place after completing a housesitting assignment to get to know it even better. We are huge fans of locating accommodations once on the ground. The internet is a good place to get a feel for what is available.

The main apartment rental websites include:

Wimdu & 9flats – good for finding accommodations in Europe

Homeaway – large inventory of global rentals including Central America

Vacation rental sites include:     VRBO &  Flipkey

Other useful websites include:

Sabbatical Homes  a directory of academic housesits, home rentals and house swaps. You can use the site if you are not an academic. Most of the rentals are in Europe, North America, and Australia. Not as many in Central or South America. You can find relatively affordable short term rentals with flexible terms ( minimum terms typically range from 2 weeks to 6 months).

Viviun.com  is also a good place to look for condos and homes for rent. Viviun is useful because they have many listings for Central America. Also a good starting place if you are looking at purchasing property overseas.

For a detailed strategy for finding low cost accommodations please see The Savvy Travellers Guide to Affordable Accommodations.

Technology Resources

Communication Tools:

Skype is an extremely  useful communication tool for housesitting. It enables you conduct video interviews, send text messages, photos and files to other Skype users. Skype can also be used for low cost international phone calls. Skype can be downloaded for free from the internet.

If you are new to Skype or would like to learn some new tricks here is a free online Skype Tutorial

The World Clock – Time Zones is a useful site to make sure you are on time for your Skype interview (helpful when dealing with multiple time zones).

Another useful tool we use is Google Voice. This is a telephone call routing and voicemail service available if you have if you have a US Telephone number.

Private Internet Access   I first started looking at virtual private networks (VPN) to get around Skype being blocked in Belize. There are many other important reasons to use a VPN when travelling, including internet security, data protection and browsing privacy. I chose Private Internet Access because they were well ranked, had good reviews, and the price point was also appealing. I purchased the one year plan which works out to just over $3 per month. I can now Skype anywhere in the world.

Cloud Storage:

Drop Box   Dropbox is a worthwhile program for anyone and especially valuable when you are travelling for extended periods. Dropbox is a file hosting service that allows users to share and store data—mostly programs and folders—over the web. Drop box is convenient, easy to share and is now a mobile app.

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Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. We will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase (at no additional cost to you). We use all the products and services listed and we recommend them because they offer excellent service and/or we are totally enthralled with the products.

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