House Sitters America

Review:

House Sitters America connects homeowners wanting someone to watch their home or pets with the individuals willing to do it. Sitters pay a $49 annual fee to register. Homeowners pay nothing to list their home and place house-sitting advertisements on the site.

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Paid or free

House sitters choose whether to charge for their services or offer them for free, in exchange for free accommodations. But sitters are not allowed to switch back and forth from paid to unpaid work on this site.

If you choose to charge, the fee will be listed on your profile. However, you are responsible for collecting the payment. House Sitters America doesn’t collect for you. Nor does the site charge a fee on transactions.

Like several overseas house sitting sites, this one appears to favor house sitters who are looking for free travel, rather than paid work.

What’s not to like?

Given that registering as a homeowner is free, there’s no reason not to do so. However, don’t expect a lot of action here. The site gets only about 40,000 visitors a month. For a site that’s covering all of the U.S., that isn’t much.

Likewise, if you’re paying an annual fee to be a sitter on this site, the good news is the fee is relatively low. The bad news is you’ll find a lot more housesits on bigger sites. If you’re looking for free travel — or to make money house/pet-sitting, there are better choices.

Recommendations:

If you’re looking to pet sit as paid employment, sign up with Rover. There’s no fee to sign up. You simply pay a commission to the site, if you book a job. You can sign up with Rover here. 

You may also want to check out Nomador, HouseCarers and TrustedHousesitters, if you want free accommodations in exchange for housesitting. Our top pick in the category is TrustedHousesitters, which charges $129 for a basic membership. Although that’s more than you pay here, this site is about 10 times bigger and more likely to land you a good housesit. You can sign up with TrustedHousesitters here.

What their users say: (from feefo)

We have been lucky to do housesits from Boston to Seattle! We’ve had 28 different sitters in our home taking care of our pets. The accommodations have been wonderful and we’ve enjoyed the dogs and cats. Housesitting has been a boon to our retirement!

Every time I sign up. I message multiple people about house sitting for them. They never choose me and I never get an opportunity to house sit. And house sitters provides no refund if you’re unsuccessful. So basically i pay to waste my time browsing and sending messages. HUGE gamble paying this company. Highly do not recommend signing up until they provide a refund option.

I really like House Sitters America and the new website is great. I deducted one star because there’s no app. Communication is easiest through an app, especially as a sit gets close and the sitter may be traveling to the homeowners house. But besides that, I have found some great sits through their site.

Found sitters here

I’ve been a member for 2-3 years, using the site to find pet/house-sitters and also myself seeking house-sits to do. Not as much traffic on this site as on the much more expensive ones, but I’ve found awesome sitters here. User-friendly and inexpensive.

The house sitters cannot choose whether or not to publish a review by a homeowner as is an option on other sites. I had a bad experience with a home owner but fortunately on another site as all my hard-earned excellent reviews could have been negated by one review by a seriously maladjusted person.

I’ve been a member for 3 years and have had wonderful experiences locating housesitting. I have at least two homeowners now as recurring clients and have had dozens of others request me based on my housesitting profile. I highly recommend this site for both homeowners and house sitters.