Honest Trusted Housesitters Review 2024 + Must-Knows!
23 Jan, 2024
Eva Mitchell
I’m going to take an educated guess and assume you have stumbled across this article because you are considering signing up to Trusted Housesitters? But maybe you have some concerns you want to clear up before committing.
I am here to help! It can be difficult navigating Trusted Housesitters reviews as sometimes they don’t seem to be the most transparent. If you want to know the raw, stripped back details of house sitting, not the fairies and fluff, I am here to share with you our completely honest personal experience of house sitting using the Trusted Housesitters app.
After completing over 15 house sits around the world (and counting!) since January 2023, I can let you in on the pros and cons of house sitting with Trusted Housesitters.
Please feel free to ask me any burning questions you have about house sitting in the comments at the end of the article.
Now let’s get started!
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Our Honest Trusted Housesitters Review
Let’s just start with the fact that Trusted Housesitters has been an absolute game-changer for us! Housesitting doesn’t come without it’s ups and downs but for us, the positives have always outweighed the negatives we have encountered.
Trusted Housesitters has allowed us to travel the world on a budget, meet some amazing people, live like a local and of course, meet many furry friends who have stolen our hearts along the way! The actual Trusted Housesitters app is great as it makes it simple to find and secure house sits all over the world. I will go into more details below on everything we love about house sitting with Trusted Housesitters.
With all good things there must be negatives right? True. Housesitting is not always as easy as a few cuddles and a top up of food for your newfound furry friends. It requires effort, care and being able to deal with any situations that may arise around the house or with the pets. We have had to contact owners when we were worried about their pet’s health and when we have had electricity cuts, we have had to walk dogs that refuse to walk and have had to deal with pet owners constantly changing dates. We have managed to take these issues in our stride and have never let them overshadow the joy we get from looking after our furry friends. Rest assured that the issues we have encountered only happen occasionally, but they are something to be aware of and prepared for when you sign up to house sits.
Overall, we absolutely love using Trusted Housesitters and find that the people and pets we meet add a sparkle to our lives as we travel the world.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty of what Trusted Housesitters is and answer all of your questions about Trusted Housesitters.
What is Trusted Housesitters?
Trusted Housesitters is a platform that connects home and pet owners with house sitters around the world. Homeowners will advertise their upcoming sit requirements and house sitters on the platform can apply to be accepted to sit for the owner.
Is Trusted House Sitters legit?
Yes, Trusted Housesitters is a legit housesitting platform designed to connect homeowners with house sitters all over the world. We have used Trusted Housesitters to secure multiple international house sits over the past year, in-fact I'm writing this article from a house sit in France with a gorgeous German Shepherd!
How does Trusted Housesitters work?
Trusted Housesitters has various membership options where you can sign up as a homeowner or a house sitter. After selecting the best membership plan to suit your needs, you will need to create a Trusted Housesitters profile. You will then have access to view house sitting opportunities available and potential house sitters available.
As a house sitter, you will be able to search for sits that are available wherever and whenever you desire. When a sit is available during dates that suit you, you can go ahead and apply for the sit. The homeowner will then review the applications they receive and will either decline your application or send you an invitation to accept the sit.
If you receive an invitation, you will want to get in contact with the homeowner as soon as possible and set up a video chat to ensure you are a good match for their house-sitting needs.
When you are happy to go ahead with the sit, you can go onto the message thread on the Trusted Housesitters app with the homeowner and accept the invitation. Likewise, if you don’t think you are a good match for the house sit, you have every right to decline the offer.
The homeowner will usually put together a welcome guide for you to review on the Trusted Housesitters app, we find these super useful to refer to. Confirm your exact arrival time with the homeowner and ask any last minute questions prior to your sit commencing.
Now you are ready to complete your house sit!
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How much is Trusted Housesitters to join?
Trusted Housesitters is not free to join, however they do offer three affordable yearly membership plans (prices from January 2024):
1. Basic Sitter Membership Plan: $109/yr
This plan allows you to apply for unlimited house sits worldwide on the Trusted Housesitters platform.
2. Standard Sitter Membership Plan: $149/yr
This is the plan we initially signed up for because not only can you apply for unlimited house sits worldwide, you also have access to multiple other services. You are covered by accident & third-party liability insurance, you have immediate access to chat to a vet when you are pet sitting, there is additional member support and the saved search function on the Trusted Housesitters platform allowing you to identify potential sits quickly.
3. Premium Sitter Membership Plan: $229/yr
This plan is a step up again and includes everything the Standard Sitter plan includes plus sit cancellation protection, two global airport lounge passes and a Premium badge on your profile.
There are also combined membership options where you can be both a homeowner and a house sitter.
Do you get paid to house sit using Trusted Housesitters?
No, Trusted Housesitters is for unpaid sits only. It is a mutually beneficial exchange for both house sitters and home and pet owners. Many homeowners will offer sitters a bottle of wine or local treats which is a thoughtful gesture and always appreciated. Some will even invite you over for dinner the night before the sit, which we absolutely love. We generally find homeowners are happy for you to eat food they have at home, however we tend to just buy our own groceries and only use things like oil, spices and eat things that are likely to expire while the owners are gone.
Do all house sits advertised on Trusted Housesitters have pets?
No. Not all sits require you to look after pets on Trusted Housesitters. I would say 99% of sits do have pets though, so if you are looking for pet-free house sits you may struggle to find many available on the Trusted Housesitters app. Trusted Housesitters is best for people who get joy out of looking after pets.
Can we house sit as a couple?
Yes, it is possible to house sit as a couple using the Trusted Housesitters platform, just like we do! All you need is one membership with an account describing both of you. The account will have one of you as the main contact and your partner as the additional person.
Do homeowners on Trusted Housesitters lend you their car during the sit?
Yes, many homeowners are happy to lend you their car while they are away. Most often these sits are in more rural locations. The owner will likely mention on their Trusted Housesitters profile if they have a car available for the housesitter under the Amenities section. We have had three house sits where the homeowners have provided a car for us and three house sits where we have had to hire a car to be able to do the sit. Keep in mind that some house sits will require your own car. Make sure to factor in whether that is possible for you or not before applying for these sits as you don’t want to waste anyone’s time. In Europe, we preferred to use car share apps such as Turo and Amovens to make care hire affordable. Some of these cars even allow pets which is a bonus when you are pet sitting.
Why we decided to sign up to Trusted Housesitters
Back in January 2023, Tim and I were discussing ways to reduce our travel costs without having to slum it in dorm rooms around the world. We saw Trusted Housesitters as the ideal option for us as we both love animals and thought, well maybe we would enjoy housesitting too.
Don’t get me wrong, we were pretty nervous at the start! Would we even get accepted for a sit to start with? Were we just wasting our money on something we won’t like? Would we find it weird staying in other people’s homes? It was all an unknown at the time, but we decided after analysing many Trusted Housesitters reviews that we had nothing to lose, so we gave it a crack! And we do not regret our decision one bit! We truly weren’t prepared for how much we would enjoy house sitting and have loved becoming best buds with all the adorable pets we meet.
Our favourite things about the Trusted Housesitters App
- 1. Global sits: It is a global app which makes it ideal for travellers looking to house sit internationally. Knowing we were going to be travelling the world, it was a no-brainer to sign up to Trusted Housesitters over any other house sitting platform.
- 2. Easy to use: The THS app is easy to use. The search function is straightforward, and the messenger section makes it easy to communicate with homeowners.
- 3. Welcome Guide: THS encourages owners to fill in the welcome guide which we find extremely useful as house sitters.
- 4. Past reviews: You can see past reviews of homeowners making it easy to identify anything concerning or to put your mind at ease when you see other sitters have thoroughly enjoyed the sit.
- 5. Saved Searches: You can save searches for specific locations during specific dates, making it easier to check for any new results daily.
How we secured our first sit brief
When we were researching Trusted Housesitters reviews prior to signing up, we found a lot of people saying it’s really difficult to secure your first house sit because you have no reviews to prove yourself. This left us feeling a little worried about whether Trusted Housesitters would be worth it for us. What if it was going to take months to get accepted for our first sit? But honestly, we had nothing to worry about and neither do you! We scored the first house sit we applied for! We both couldn’t believe our eyes when the offer came through on the Trusted Housesitters app.
Securing our first Trusted Housesitters sit would not have been possible had we not put a significant amount of effort into writing a standout Trusted Housesitters profile and sending a carefully curated message to the owner when applying for the sit. The lovely lady who accepted our sit application had no qualms about having us sit her fur babies despite us not having any Trusted Housesitters reviews yet.
It helps that we were able to set up a video chat with her before accepting the sit to discuss the pets, her expectations of us and to just get to know each other a little bit. We agreed to meet her and her fur babies prior to the sit so we were familiar with her home and pets.
How Trusted Housesitters has taken us all over the globe
We have been extremely lucky to be able to house sit globally using the Trusted Housesitters platform. To date we have secured house sits across Australia, Italy, Spain, France, Scotland and England. During our housesitting journey we have met some amazing people and spent many days with adorable pets that have stolen our hearts along the way.
How housesitting has enabled us to travel for a year
Over the past year, we have spent over 18 weeks house sitting. When you estimate an average budget hotel room to be $100aud per night, we have saved a ton of money on accommodation by housesitting!
We have found that our ideal way to travel is to mix budget hotel stays with Trusted Housesitters sits. The house sits are usually our down time where we can relax for a couple weeks, explore the local area with the dogs and enjoy home comforts. When you are travelling fulltime there is nothing like home-cooked meals, having a couch to chill on and having a little more privacy in the bathroom than a hotel usually allows for.
The Pros and Cons of Trusted Housesitters
Pros:
- This is the number one reason to pet sit! You get to become friends with some adorable pets with hearts as big as their personalities.
- Most homeowners are lovely people who appreciate you looking after their homes and fur babies while they are away.
- Some homeowners may invite you over the day before the sit commences so you can meet them and the pets, socialise over a lovely dinner and catch up on any last-minute information you need to complete the sit.
- Being able to Housesit across the globe means you can utilise Trusted Housesitters to significantly reduce your accommodation costs while travelling.
- You can explore new areas you may or may not have been to before.
- Being able to spread out in a home is a bonus for us as we are usually confined to hotel rooms and Airbnbs.
- You get to live like a local while you are house sitting. Pop along to the local market, take part in the pub quiz down the road or meet the locals as you take the dogs for a walk around the area.
Cons:
- You may end up with a challenging sit if the homeowner hasn’t been completely transparent about any important information about their home or pets. We landed a house sit once with some lovely dogs but unfortunately for us, the home had an ant problem which proved to be quite frustrating to deal with. The ant issue was never mentioned prior to the sit.
- Homeowners can cancel sits last minute. This has only happened to us once and it was totally reasonable of the pet owner to cancel. More on this below.
- Homeowners request date changes that may clash with your other plans. We always find it useful to ask how set in stone their dates are prior to accepting sits so we can plan accordingly, especially if we are on a tight timeline.
- Some homeowners have different expectations of communication frequency, cleanliness etc. We did receive one neutral review that left us slightly disheartened after thoroughly enjoying the house sit. Try not to let a negative comment in a review get you down. At the end of the day, everyone has different expectations and that is okay, you can only do your best.
Have we ever had a house sit cancel on us?
Yes, we have. In this situation, it would have been beneficial for us to have had the cancellation insurance included in the Premium membership plan as it would have provided us financial compensation to cover accommodation costs.
In our scenario, it was totally reasonable for the homeowner to cancel the sit. Her poor cat had just been diagnosed with cancer and they were about to commence life-saving treatment. These sorts of situations can arise from time to time, so it is important that if you are relying on housesitting as a way of saving money while travelling that you always have back up money for alternative accommodation and the cancellation insurance.
When we heard of the awful situation the pet owner was in, we sent our well wishes and arranged an alternative sit for those dates. Luckily, we had enough flexibility in our plans at that stage to change our travel plans.
Have we ever had to contact a vet during a house sit?
Luckily, we have never had to contact a vet during any of our house sits. There were a few times in the past that we noticed there was something wrong with the pet we were looking after. In these circumstances, a quick message to the owner to inform them of our concern and they were able to let us know what medication to use that they already had at home.
Most pet owners will respond quickly to any concerns that you may have, so my advice would be to maintain honest and open communication with them for the duration of the sit.
Is House Sitting worth it using Trusted Housesitters?
100% yes it is worth it! Being a member of the Trusted Housesitters community has opened us up to some incredible experiences around the world, we have met some amazing people and adorable pets and have managed to save thousands of dollars on accommodation on our epic year of travel.
If you are interested in diving into your own Trusted Housesitters journey. Use our exclusive Trusted Housesitters discount code to receive 25% off your membership.
So that’s a wrap on our honest Trusted Housesitters Review. I hope I have managed to answer all of your questions about house sitting with Trusted Housesitters. If not, feel free to drop a comment below with your questions! I would love to hear from you.
About Us
Hello, Hola, Ciao! We are Tim & Eva, a couple of kiwis who have spent the last few years saving for and planning our epic year-long adventure around the world. Our goal is to inspire fellow wanderlust souls (just like you!) to Make Cents Of Travel by sharing our experiences and strategies we used to turn our dream of long-term travel into a reality.
