Is it Safe to Travel as a House Sitter?
This post includes a copy of our FREE guide: Top Safety Tips for Traveling House Sitters! Download yours here.
When I first heard about house sitting in exchange for free accommodation, I was convinced that it was too good to be true. I turned to the internet to uncover the truth about house sitting for myself.
After looking more into it, I found out that yes, house sitting is in fact a very legitimate way to travel on a budget. With this question answered, my next question was,
“How safe is house sitting?”
I spent hours filtering through Google, social media, and forums to uncover answers. During that research I learned that hundreds of thousands of house sitters are safely participating in house sit exchanges every year.
I also learned that the best house sitting websites like Trusted Housesitters take specific precautions to make sure their users can enjoy the safest possible experiences, such as conducting ID checks, having a strict code of conduct, providing customer support, and asking sitters to review experiences with homeowners.
I definitely encouraged to see that so many people were enjoying safe and secure house sitting experiences, but I still wondered what personal precautions I could take to make sure I had the safest experience possible. I mean, if I’m going to fly to another continent to watch someone’s pet, I want to be as confident as possible that it’s going to a safe experience!
Since I didn’t yet have any experience, I decided to turn to the experts. By learning from the house sitter community, I uncovered learned tips and tricks to vet homeowners and ensure I have the safest house sitting experience possible.
Reading about other house sitters real-life-experiences helped me feel more confident about starting my own travels with Austin. We learned that the best way to ensure a safe, and easy transition into house-sitting is to start by house sitting locally.
We followed their advice and found our first house sit in Bend, Oregon. This was the best way for us to build up our experience comfortably, since we were starting out in an area that we knew like the back of our hand!
Thanks to the advice of the community, we had a wonderful first experience as traveling house sitters. Then, after a few more successful house sits, we felt completely reassured that house sitting was very safe way to travel. However, we also found out that there were even more steps to follow to make sure we consistently enjoyed safe experiences
To ensure you are as prepared as possible, we’ve outlined all of these tips in our free Safety Tips for Newbie House sitters! Before you begin house sitting, make sure to download and review this guide.
Looking for House Sitter Safety Tips? We got you covered.
After that sit, the rest is history! We fell in love with the exchange and knew that we wanted to do this for as long as we could. It was real, safe, and the most incredible way to travel the world affordably. Although we are still cautious about the sits we take and are continuously refining our process to ensure our safety while traveling as pet sitters. I can attest that this exchange is a safe and incredible way to travel.
For tips, advice, and stories, check out these posts:
