Nomador

What: Nomador connects homeowners with people who are willing to watch dogs and water plants in exchange for free accommodations

Expected pay: none

HuslScore: $$$$

Commissions and fees: $0 – $99 per year

Where: Worldwide

Requirements: none

Nomador Review:

Nomador connects homeowners and people willing to house and pet sit. The expectation is that housesitting is a barter arrangement. House sitters provide light work — feeding pets and watering plants — in exchange for a place to stay while they travel.

Unlike most sites of this type, both homeowners and potential sitters can sign up for free at Nomador. The free option is limited. Sitters are only able to contact a small number of homeowners before having to pay. The same holds true for homeowners. However, it gives you the ability to test the site before committing. If you only occasionally house sit — or rarely need a house sitter — the free option may be enough.

Positives

There are a number of things to like about this site, including the fact that the only time Nomador will auto-charge your credit card is if you sign up for a monthly membership. If you do an annual membership, the site will remind you that your subscription is about to expire. But it won’t charge you without your authorization. You can also get a refund up to 14 days after subscribing, as long as you have not used the service. This compares favorably to sites like Housesitter.com, which automatically renew subscriptions and do not refund charges under any circumstances.

Nomador asks for identifying documents to create “trust” badges on your profile. However, once a representative has received and reviewed your information, the site destroys the document. That’s a nice privacy protection.

The site also provides guidance in the form of a fill-in-the-blanks book, showing homeowners what information they may want to provide sitters. This includes emergency phone numbers; a contact for your vet; nearby attractions, markets and restaurants, etc.

After a sit, both homeowner and house sitter are asked for feedback. That feedback is added to both profiles, regardless of whether you’re a paid subscriber or a free user. 

Finally, the site has a “stopover” option, which allows homeowners to volunteer to host a house sitter between sits. If you are a full-time house sitter, who doesn’t have a home of your own, this option alone makes Nomador worth the subscription price.

Negatives

We have just one gripe. When you register as a homeowner, you must put in dates saying when you want a house sitter. If you’re registering for an unknown future date, you are allowed to say that the listing is tentative. However, it would be nice if you could just list and worry about putting in dates / housesitting advertisements later when your plans are set.

Recommendations:

Overall, we think you can get a lot of value from this site for free, and you certainly get enough free access to know whether Nomador offers a service worth buying. Other house sitting sites worth checking out: TrustedHousesitters, HouseCarers and House Sitters America.

What their users say: (from SiteJabber)

It was my first house-sit, and everything went perfectly. The website itself is very well organized, and customer support very helpful.

As a long-time house-sitter I’m so glad I found this website. They have many offers in Europe, especially in France. Great value for the price.

From TrustPilot

Can’t get enough of Nomador. We’ve met so many wonderful people that we stay in touch with even years after petsitting/housesitting. Can’t recommend it enough!

Very good experience so far after one homesit and another planned. The website is generally clear and intuitive. Areas for possible improvement would be the ability to add more filters and sorting of homesit adverts – ordering by date of advert, date of stay, region (within country), distance from home etc. Also better management of alerts which do not seem to be adjustable after setting up. Interaction with other users is generally good. Some users never respond but this shows in their profile. Ability to see if messages have been read is a good feature. It is not clear how the “response rate” bar works but does give an indication which is useful.

I find Nomador to be one of the most secure petsitting sites, because reviews can only be left if the sit was arranged through their site, so no padding with false testimonies. They also give pointers to both the hosts and the sitters to help with mutual understanding and support, and I find that my nomador hosts tend to leave the best instructions as well as thinking of my needs while staying in their homes.

Half the clothes lists Nomador as one of the best international house sitting sites