Although this list isn’t exhaustive, it does contain a list of the main house sitting website out there and a writeup of the ones that we’re members of.

People often ask us which one they should join, or whether they should join them all, and we wanted to have one central place to send them.

Trusted HouseSitters

Trusted HouseSitters (trustedhousesitters.com) was founded by Andy Peck, someone who realised that home owners were looking for reliable, police-checked house sitters who would mind their home whilst they were away or otherwise on holidays.

Why it’s our favourite:

Of all the house sitting websites out there, Trusted Housesitters has the best functionality. If you send an email to a homeowner you tend to get a response and if the position has been filled, it’s clearly marked on the site. This is a frustration we’ve had with other sites.

Secondly, Trusted Housesitters are always improving their site. There a team of technical developers, designers and PR all answering queries, listening and making improvements and that makes a huge difference to the experience as a housesitter.

(As a disclaimer, James works in a technical role for Trusted Housesitters. That said, we’ve had way more housesits through them than any other site so it’s fair to give them such a decent review.)

More info about Trusted Housesitters and a promotional code: http://www.thehousesittingcouple.com/trusted-house-sitters/

MindMyHouse

MindMyHouse has a lovely design but not-so-great functionality. We’ve applied for quite a few housesits only to find out that the position was filled months ago. This can get very frustrating very quickly.

That said, we have had one or two housesits from MindMyHouse so although they’ve not provided us with the most housesits they have provided us with a few.

More info about MindMyHouse:

House Carers

We’re also members of house carers (housecarers.com). House Carers has been in existence for quite a while now, more than a decade in fact.

We haven’t had a large amount of experience with House Carers for the simple fact that a lot of their housesits tend to be in Australia or the US and we’ve kept ourselves in Europe up until now. We did apply for a few housesits early on but didn’t hear anything back. Perhaps this was due to our then inexperience or perhaps the housesit had been filled and like MindMyHouse hadn’t been updated, it’s impossible to know.

Either way it’s another housesit to be a part of. Given the cost of a hotel per night, if we could get one housesit from them it would pay off the inexpensive annual membership in one go.

More info about Housecarers: http://www.thehousesittingcouple.com/housecarers/

Other Housesitting Websites

We’re not a part of any of these but though we’d list them in any case.

• LuxuryHouseSitting.com – Not sure how active this one is. A few people have been in contact to say that they don’t think the house sitting assignments on the site are either real/active however as we’re not members we cannot comment on this. Certainly from everyone we’ve spoken to, it’s not a very active – if at all active – house sitting site.
• Caretaker.org – More caretaker-type paid jobs but some housesitting jobs as well. Again we’re not members of this one, but we do occasionally get some comment spam saying how good their site is. It’s probably what’s put us off joining being honest.
• Christian-Housesitters.com – Active website but not one we’re a part of.
• sabbaticalhomes.com – Very occasionally has housesits but that’s not the main focus of the site.