Search interest in house sitting opportunities has been climbing across Australia. Before you start applying, one clarification saves a lot of confusion: most Australian house sitting is not a job in the employment sense.
Jobs, or exchanges?
Most listings on Australian house-sitting platforms are non-monetary. You stay in someone's home and care for their pets, and the accommodation is what you receive. There is no wage. Paid pet sitting does exist and is a genuine source of income for some people, but it is generally arranged through commission marketplaces rather than house-sitting platforms.
Neither is better. They suit different circumstances. If you need income, look for paid work. If you want to travel cheaply, live somewhere new for a while, or reduce accommodation costs between leases, the exchange model is what you want. Our guide to paid pet sitting versus house sitting sets out the difference.
Where the opportunities actually are
Two things are worth knowing about the Australian market. First, demand from homeowners peaks sharply between late December and January, and again around school holidays. Applying in November for a Christmas sit is a very different experience from applying in December. Second, search interest in house sitting is proportionally strongest outside the largest cities, with Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory showing consistently high relative interest.
The practical implication is that competition for a Sydney or Melbourne inner-suburb sit is much higher than for a regional or smaller-capital sit. If you are flexible about location, the odds improve dramatically.
How to be the applicant who gets chosen
- Complete your profile properly. An empty profile with a first-name-only greeting gets skipped, every time.
- Write about the specific pets in the listing. Homeowners can tell instantly whether you read it, and generic copy-paste applications are the most common complaint they have.
- Be honest about experience. If you have not looked after a diabetic cat before, say so and say what you have done. Overstating experience is how sits go badly.
- Offer a video call early. It costs nothing and it separates you from most other applicants.
- Reply quickly. Response time is one of the few objective signals a homeowner has before meeting you.
- Provide references, including non-sitting ones if you are new. A previous landlord or employer is better than nothing.
Our guide to profile tips that win sits goes into what to put where.
What to confirm before you accept
- Is this paid or non-monetary? Confirm in writing.
- What exactly is expected: which animals, what routine, what garden or pool work, what cleaning at the end.
- How long are the pets comfortable being left alone, and does that fit your work or study commitments?
- Who authorises veterinary treatment, and up to what amount?
- What is the transport situation? A beautiful regional sit with no car and no public transport is a difficult month.
- Is there reliable internet, if you need it?
The question most sitters forget
Ask how long the pets can be left alone. It determines whether you can work, study, shop or socialise during the sit, and it is the single most common source of mismatch between what a sitter expected and what the sit actually involved.
Our meet-and-greet checklist for sitters covers the rest of the conversation.
You can browse current sits across Australia to see what is open now.
