A house sitting reference in Australia is a named person a homeowner can telephone who has seen you look after something that was not yours. It does not have to come from a previous house sit, and it often will not. A former landlord or property manager, a neighbour whose cat you fed for a fortnight, a manager, or the volunteer coordinator at the shelter where you walk dogs all count. Western Australian consumer guidance asks a homeowner to seek references they can personally contact, as one check among several.
That matters more than new sitters expect, because a reference has nowhere to live on a profile. A Sitterly sitter profile records qualifications as four tick boxes, First Aid Certificate, Police Check, Vet Nurse and Dog Trainer, with no referee field at all. Your references exist only where you put them: in your bio, and in the message you send with an application.
Australian guidance asks for referees a homeowner can ring
Consumer Protection WA's Commissioner published a guide to house sitting on 9 April 2025 telling Western Australians to ask for references they can personally contact. That is one item on a list. The same guide says it is a good idea to ask to see a National Police Certificate, and to ask whether the house sitter or the agency has insurance. So a reference is not the only thing a homeowner is told to ask for, but it is the thing only you can supply.
The department's separate page on house, pet or baby sitting services, last updated 21 November 2024, is written for people engaging a commercial sitting agency rather than a private sitter, so its checks are business checks: an ASIC name search, an Employment Agent licence, a police certificate the business obtained for its employees. Its reference advice, to seek references of the service you can contact directly for an opinion, carries across to an individual by analogy rather than by instruction. The same page is worth reading for a different reason: it warns that many home policies exclude deliberate damage and theft by people lawfully invited onto your property.
Read the reference part as a specification. A signed letter with no phone number at the bottom does not meet it. A name, a relationship and a mobile number does.
You probably already have three references and have not counted them
| Referee | What they can speak to | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Former landlord or property manager | How you left a property that was not yours, and whether you spoke up when something broke | The strongest non-sitting reference most Australians already hold |
| A neighbour or friend whose pets you have minded | Unsupervised animal care in a real home, including feeding, medication and mess | Strong if they name the animal, the dates and one specific thing |
| A current or former manager | Turning up, following written instructions, raising a problem early | Useful on a first sit, silent on animals |
| A shelter or rescue volunteer coordinator | Handling unfamiliar animals under somebody else's rules and roster | Rare enough that homeowners notice it |
| Your own vet or veterinary nurse | That your animals are vaccinated, desexed and seen regularly | Almost nobody offers this, and it is quietly persuasive |
| A long-standing housemate | Shared living, cleanliness, locking up, paying your share | Weakest of the six, and still better than nothing |
Most of those cost nothing to arrange. If you have none of them, start the shelter route this month. RSPCA Australia says its volunteers care for animals in the shelters, and local rescues in every state run the same way. Six weeks of Saturday shifts gives you a referee who has watched you handle animals you did not choose.
What does not work is shorter. A relative offered as a neutral referee when your surname is on the message. Somebody who has never seen you inside a home or near an animal. And any letter with no way to reach the person who signed it, which a cautious homeowner reads as something you could have typed yourself.
A reference is only worth reading if it names one thing you actually did
Reliable, honest, tidy and trustworthy appear in every reference ever written, including the ones written about people who were none of those things.
Ask your referee for four specifics: how long they have known you, in what capacity, one concrete thing with a date attached, and whether they are happy to take a call. "She is reliable and tidy" is worth nothing. "She fed and medicated our two cats for a fortnight last June while we were in Cairns, sent a photo most days, and the house was tidier than we left it" answers the question a homeowner is actually asking.
The test to apply before you send it
Read your reference and ask whether it could have been written about anybody at all. If it could, it is not evidence, it is decoration. One dated, specific sentence beats a page of praise.
Ask permission before you hand anybody's number to a stranger
Nobody enjoys a call from an unknown homeowner about somebody they have not thought about in a year. Ask first, say roughly when calls might come, and give them the material to answer with. The message below is an illustration, not anything a member sent.
“Hi Anna, I am setting up a house sitting profile, and homeowners here ask for referees they can ring before they hand over a key. Would you be happy for me to give your name and mobile to a homeowner or two over the next few months? If a call comes, the useful things to mention are how long you have known me, in what capacity, and one specific thing, like the fortnight I had Rosie and Bill while you were in Queensland. Nothing needs writing down, most homeowners just want a short phone call. Please say no if it is awkward and I will not raise it again.”
Then put it where a homeowner will see it. With no referee field on the profile, that is the last two lines of your first message: name, relationship, how long they have known you, phone or email, one sentence on what they saw, and the fact that they are expecting a call. That moves you from somebody claiming references to somebody offering them.
Two contactable people beat five letters, one speaking to property and one to animals, because those are the two things being handed over.
A reference describes the past, and it is not a guarantee
You chose your referee, so a homeowner is hearing the best available case by design. No reference describes how somebody will behave in a house they have never been inside, and nobody is monitoring anything after the call ends. That is an argument for layering it, not for skipping it.
A reference sits alongside a meet and greet or video call, verification you have actually completed, a written agreement and a proper handover. The RSPCA's guidance on pets and holidays recommends arranging that meet and greet beforehand and giving the carer the vet's contact details, which is the part of the ritual that tests whether an animal settles with you.
The Australian Federal Police charges $56 for a National Police Check and $113 where fingerprints are required, and describes the certificate as listing disclosable court outcomes. That answers a different question to a reference and neither substitutes for the other. Our guide to what pet sitter verification actually means covers the limits of a check, and the house sitting agreement guide covers what to write down once you are chosen.
What Sitterly does and does not do
Sitterly supports the connection. Homeowners and sitters remain responsible for their own arrangements. Verification is optional and started by the member rather than applied to everyone, Sitterly does not vet or check its members, and completing a verification tier is not an endorsement of that person by the platform.
Homeowners: ring, do not email
A call gives you tone, pauses and the things people will only say out loud, and it confirms the number belongs to a real person who was expecting to hear from you.
- Ask how they know the sitter and how the arrangement came about, which confirms the referee is who the sitter said they were.
- If the referee is a property manager, the agency has a public Australian Business Number you can check for free on ABN Lookup to confirm it is a real and active business.
- Ask what went wrong and how the sitter handled it. A referee who cannot name one hiccup either was not paying attention or was not really there.
- Ask whether they would have them again, ask it last, then stop talking.
Your first sitting reference is two nights away
The fastest way out of the reference problem is a short, easy, local sit. Two nights in your own city, a cat or an undemanding dog, somebody who does not need three weeks of proof to say yes. At the end you have a reference from an actual house sit, plus a review once the booking is marked completed.
Timing is the other half, because Australian homeowners travel in a small number of tight windows and those are the weeks somebody will take a chance on a profile with no history, which is the argument in our guide to getting a first sit with no reviews. Before you apply, make sure your profile is finished and published, and read why sitters get passed over so a good reference is not wasted on an application that gets cut in the first pass.
Questions Australian sitters ask about references
- Do I need a written house sitting reference letter, or is a phone number enough?
- A contactable person is what the Western Australian guidance asks for, so the phone number is the part that counts. If your referee would rather write something, keep it to a short dated paragraph with their name, relationship and contact details at the bottom.
- Can a family member be a house sitting reference?
- They can, if they have genuinely left you in charge of their home or animals, and you should say plainly that they are family. Offering a relative as a neutral referee is the quickest way to lose a homeowner who works it out. Someone outside the family carries more weight for the same story.
- Is a police check a substitute for a reference?
- No. A National Police Check reports disclosable court outcomes as at the day it was issued. A reference is the only thing that speaks to how somebody behaved in a home. Homeowners can filter the sitter directory by police check, so a check gets you seen and the reference is what gets you chosen.
Ask two people this week
Pick the two most likely to say yes, send them the message above, and write their details into the bottom of your next application while the conversation is still fresh. If you have not joined yet, create a sitter profile, then go and see which sits are open now.
