Todd and I had been in a stranger’s kitchen for about four minutes, holding a two-page note about a cat named Pepe, when the owners waved goodbye and drove off to the airport. The house was ours for three weeks. We hadn’t paid for a place to sleep in almost a month. Pepe was already ignoring us from the windowsill.
That’s housesitting, and it’s the reason we’ve kept traveling for going on nine years without a normal income to match it. We’ve done it since 2018, in eight different countries, adding up to more than two years of free stays. Roughly six of our summers have been spent in Spain this way.
People hear “free accommodation” and assume there’s a trick. There isn’t, really. There’s just a trade most travelers don’t think to make. So here’s how it works, what it costs, and whether it’s a fit for you. We’re not experts. We’ve just done a lot of it.
What housesitting actually is
A housesit is a swap. Someone goes away, usually for a week or several, and they need a person they trust to stay in their home and look after it. Most of the time that means pets. You move in, you feed the dog, you water the tomatoes, and you keep the place lived-in. In return, you stay for free.
No money changes hands in either direction. You don’t pay rent, and you don’t get paid. That’s the part that surprises people. It isn’t a job and it isn’t a rental. It’s two sets of people solving a problem for each other at the same time.
For the owner, the problem is a kennel that costs a fortune and stresses the dog out. For us, the problem is that hotels and apartments are what kill a long trip. Take the nightly cost out, and slow travel suddenly adds up.
How it works, step by step
The mechanics are simple enough that we explain them at dinner all the time and watch people pull out a phone to look it up. Here’s the short version.
You join a sitting site and build a profile
Most sits are arranged through membership sites where owners post their dates and sitters apply. You pay a yearly fee to be on one, usually around 100 to 170 dollars, and that’s the only real cost of the whole thing. Your profile is everything. Real photos, a warm bio, and any pet experience you’ve got. Mairin leads with being a cat whisperer, which is true and also exactly what owners want to read.
You apply, early and often
Good sits go fast. The apartment in a city you actually want to be in, for dates that line up with your plans, will get a pile of applications in a day. So you apply the morning a listing posts, you write a real note that mentions their pets by name, and you make your peace with hearing no a lot before you hear yes.
You video-call before you commit
Always meet the owners on a video call first, and walk through the house with them on camera. It sounds formal. It isn’t. It’s a twenty-minute chat where both sides figure out if this feels right. We’ve turned down sits on that call, and we’ve had owners pick us on it. Trust is the whole currency here, and it gets built fast or not at all.
You show up and do the job
Then you do what you said you’d do. You keep the pets happy and the house clean, you handle the small stuff that comes up, and you leave the place better than you found it. Do that, and the owner leaves you a review. Stack up a few good reviews and the whole thing gets easier, because the next owner can see you are the real deal.
What it costs, and what it doesn’t
This is the part worth being plain about, because “free” needs an asterisk.
- The membership. One yearly fee to be on a sitting platform, usually 100 to 170 dollars. That is it for the core cost.
- Getting there. The sit is free. The flight or the train to reach it is not. This is the real expense, so we line sits up near each other or stay in one region for a stretch instead of bouncing across the map.
- Your own food and fun. You buy your own groceries and pay for your own days out. You are living somewhere, not staying at an all-inclusive.
- Time and flexibility. You are tied to someone else’s dates and someone else’s pets. If you need to be in a specific city on a specific weekend, housesitting will fight you on it.
Put it together and a month of housesitting can cost us less than a single week in a mid-range hotel would. That is not an exaggeration, and that gap is the entire reason we can keep doing this.
Is it for you? An honest read
Housesitting is not for everyone, and we would rather you know that now than three days into looking after a diabetic cat that needs an injection twice a day. A few things have to be true.
It works if…
- You actually like animals. Not in theory. You will be cleaning a litter box and walking a dog in the rain, and you should be fine with that.
- You can be flexible. The best sits rarely match your dream dates exactly, so you build the trip around them instead of the other way round.
- You are tidy and reliable. Owners are handing you their home, and the people who respect that are the ones who get asked back.
- You like staying put. A week or three in one neighborhood is the whole point. If you want to see five cities in five days, this is not your tool.
It doesn’t if…
You want a hands-off vacation, you cannot shift your dates, or the idea of being responsible for someone’s nervous rescue dog makes you tense. None of that is a character flaw. It just means you would be happier renting an apartment and owing nobody anything.
Our track record, and what it bought us
Since 2018 we have sat in eight countries. Bangkok, Brooklyn, England, the south of Spain, and on from there. More than two years of nights, free. Six or so summers based in Spain because the sits kept bringing us back and we kept saying yes.
What that money did not go toward is the point. It did not go to hotels. It went to staying longer, eating better, and getting to know a handful of places properly instead of skimming a dozen. We got a cat named Pepe who eventually decided we were acceptable. We got slow mornings in a neighborhood market because we lived near one for three weeks, not three nights.
If any of this sounds like your kind of trade, start by reading a few listings on a sitting site before you pay for anything. See the real sits, the real dates, and the real pets. You will know pretty fast whether the math and the lifestyle fit. For us it did, and it still does. Pepe sends his regards. He is still ignoring someone right now, somewhere.
