Jenaf

Hello, have any fellow travellers tried house sitting? Would like to stay at least 3 weeks or more in various countries - Baltic countries, or somewhere in Eastern Europe and then over to UK/Scotland to enable us to get more of a feel for a place. Suggestions, advice or websites would be greatly appreciated. Looking at April to September 2009.
Thanks in advance.

adrienne

I'm not sure why anyone would allow a stranger to live free in their house when they could use it as a home exchange or rent it. Sorry - Haven't seen anything on this.

zeppole

There's a website called Housecarers you might look up.

You need to be aware of that without obtaining permission to stay, 90 days is the legal limit you can stay in Europe and the UK.

zeppole

Jenaf - I was assuming you're a citizen of some country other than the UK or one in Europe, which may not be the case.

adrienne,

I'm surprised you've never heard of people who take care of other people's pets and plants while they travel by living in the home, or who take care of a second home for people. It's quite common in the US. People not only have someone stay in their house for free, they often pay a fee in addition if special tasks -- like pool maintenance or medicating a pet -- are involved.

KayF

Yes, housesitting is quite common, particularly if people have pets or plants. You can try searching on Google using 'house sitters' or 'house carers'. I know there are a couple of good sites but don't have them to hand. Also look on www.thegumtree.com in the travel section and you could try Craigslist.

Good luck, it's something we have hoped to do at some stage as well. We love animals and free accommodation always sounds good!
Kay

flanneruk

The limit for non-EU visitors in the UK is six months: for Commonwealth citizens (like jenaf) with patriality it's five years.

You might search for a poster called picture_girl who's asked about house-sitting here recently.

Although there's a bit of a flurry on the web about house-sitting in Europe, there's not much evidence there's much of it actually going on: the website quoted above is actually American.

Personally, I'd be very uninterested in letting a foreign stranger look after my life savings, and I've never heard of anyone in Britain doing this. I suspect the number of Lithuanians or Poles loaning their houses to Australians is even less.

However personable and nice - and even if they were fluent in my language - I just wouldn't believe they'd know enough about the idiosyncracies of our plumbers and washing machines to be much use. And what are neighbours for anyway? Commercialised housesitting may well be big in America. But so are cars.

Christina

House-sitting occurs in the US, but all the people I know who do it only use locals to house-sit, someone who lives in the place they do, and someone they already know in some way. I've heard of some people looking at local ads to get a college student or someone to do it, but still, it's always someone local. People want to know who someone is, and have that person accountable in some way (at least if they are local you can track them down or find out something about them).

So I think the concept of allowing some total stranger from a foreign country to housesit is quite unexpected, and I can't imagine why anyone would do it, either.

zeppole

Thanks for sharing, flanner!

It's not obvious why someone would have an opinion, let alone a vehement objection, to people hiring someone to look after their pets and garden on site, but there it is! One for posterity.

Whatever happened to the caretaker in Britain? D.H. Lawrence made it seem like such an appealing job.

zeppole

Christina,

I've known more than one person who travels extensively in the U.S. where there are summer homes as a housesitter. It's not at all unusual for people with extensive vacation property in isolated places like New Mexico or Wyoming to hire people to stay for extended periods of time (through the winter etc) to feed pets.

Also, it has been quite common in Los Angeles for people in wealthy neighborhoods to hire housesitters, who like any domestic employee, produce references. It's not a flake thing.

I'm surprised people are unaware of this. I think Goldie Hawn starred in a movie about it.

The fact that somebody personally wouldn't do it doesn't mean others don't. They do. Routinely and comfortably.

KayF

I found the websites I mentioned earlier:

http://www.housecarers.com/

I had a quick look and this site has one housesit in Estonia, 2 in Scotland and 9 in England though I have not checked the dates they want a housesitter for. There are lots of others on this site if you have time for a good look.

http://www.housesitworld.com/
http://www.mindmyhouse.com/

Best of luck
Kay

adrienne

Hi Zeppole - I didn't say that I had never heard of house sitting - of course I've heard of it. I meant that I hadn't seen anything on the internet or on this forum about it. People I know usually get family or neighbors to look in and water plants or take care of pets (short term). For longer term people usually get family members to take the pets or to stay in the house. If you're rich then you have domestic help who will be in the house while you're away. Perhaps things are different in Europe.

Anyway...I'm not the only skeptic here.

zeppole

I don't know what you're skeptical about. People who have summer homes in the country with pets or plants in them can't leave them all winter. To get someone -- with references -- who will live in the house makes sense, including for security reasons, and often to make sure the house is okay in places where it freezes. Likewise, not everybody who has a second home where they spend the summer has live-in domestic help at their urban house. But they may have cats in the city they aren't taking with them to the mountains, the lake or the beach. In Los Angeles, people often don't want to leave their houses completely empty for long periods of time. It's not like your neighbors are going to necessarily notice -- or even be able to see -- anything amiss at your house.

Some of these arrangements are informal -- retirees or writers looking for a cheap way to travel or live. Some are quite professional when it comes to taking care of expensive property or multiple animal, or performing other services.

I don't think it's all that common abroad except among Americans who have houses abroad. It Italy, for example, it's much easier to travel with one's pets, and people lock up their houses for long periods empty (but it's also true that many places in Italy that are filled with second homes have a very high rate of burglary).

FainaAgain

One of my co-workers house-sit for another. She knows her condo not burglarized, dusted, and the plants are watered. He is happy not to share his apartment with a room-mate, at least for some time, and have a car all to himself.

Our younger son loves to house-sit for his brother, it's a change for him from a small rented apartment to a large house with a back yard. And the car

Jena, if you feel so, why not ask around at work, or family members.