House Sitters

This is a very viable option for couples worried about leaving their homes unoccupied for several months and also those with pets. There are fellow caravanners and motorhomers out their who are happy to spend some time, looking after other people's property in return for somewhere to park their caravan or motorhome. The TV show Hot Property recently ran a piece on this subject and it works quite well. Finding suitable people is not that hard, but remember you do need to get cracking at least 3 months before you intend departing. You might meet such people on the road or you might get in touch with them through caravan club Newsletters or the voice of the motorhomers excellent Wanderer Newsletter, either by reading their advertisements or by putting your own ad in. The internet can help enormously with selecting the correct house sitter. We suggest you start by looking at Happy House Sitters on www.happyhousesitters.com.au. This site explains the concept extremely well and has lots of testimonials (when working!) and even lists the popularity of their service by listing statistics of house sits in various areas. If you email them at hhs@ocean.com.au they will send you their lists of sitters for your area. The service is absolutely free and the reply comes by snail mail. We found them slow to respond to email. They make their money by charging the sitters a $150.00 fee to be on their lists. There is another Australian service called House Sit World at www.housesitworld.com.au. This site is a bit hard to navigate as they have underlined blue headings which aren't actually links. However, once inside you will find lists of house sitters whom you can instantly contact via email. To us this is a much better idea as you can get going instantly. Again there are no charges as the sitters pay $50.00 a year to get on their database. There is a Testimonial Page, but it is mainly from satisfied advertisers - the few happy house owners don't have email addresses so you can't verify the authenticity - oh dear! Well worth a look. Yet another site is House Carers. Similar set up to the other two. Could anyone using the services above kindly let us know how they got on.