Why We Love House Sitting and How It Has Allowed Us to Travel The World

People ask us constantly why we chose this life. Not just why we tried house sitting — why we kept going. Why, after a decade and 60+ sits across 15 countries, we still get excited when a new listing appears in our alerts.

The honest answer is that house sitting didn’t just change how we travel. It changed what travel means to us. We met in the Australian Alps in 2014, found one-way tickets to London in 2015, and spent the next decade sitting our way across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. We’ve looked after 40 homes and cared for over 45 animals. We’ve been featured on 7 News Australia for it.

Here is why we’re still doing it — and why we think you should consider it too.

1. It Takes Us Places We Would Never Have Found Otherwise

House sitting doesn’t take you to tourist zones. It takes you to the actual places people live — the neighbourhoods, the streets, the corners of cities and countries that don’t appear on travel itineraries.

We have sat in a village in the Bergerac wine region of France that we found on a whim through a listing alert — a place we would never have booked independently. We’ve sat in an apartment at the base of the Acropolis in Athens, in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, in a coastal town in Montenegro that most travellers have never heard of. We sat on a 60-foot catamaran in the Caribbean. Every one of those sits happened because a listing appeared and we applied — not because we planned it.

That spontaneity is something you don’t get with conventional travel. The sit decides the destination, and the destination almost always surprises you. Some of our favourite places in the world are places we only found because a homeowner needed someone.

According to Airbnb’s own data, the average nightly rate globally hit $137–$158 in 2025. House sitting puts you in comparable homes — often better ones — for the cost of an annual platform membership. If you want to aim higher — oceanfront homes, private estates, properties you’d never otherwise set foot in — we’ve put together a guide to landing luxury house sits that covers exactly how to build the profile to get there.

2. The People You Meet Change How You See the World

The homeowners are often the most unexpected part of house sitting. You are trusted with someone’s home and their animals — and that trust creates a different kind of connection than anything you get from a hotel or an Airbnb.

Our favourite early experience was a homeowner in Dublin whose house was an extraordinary 80s-inspired villa filled with funky artwork, mismatched furniture, and four dogs — two Chihuahuas, a Chinese Crested, and a Whippet. We became friends with the dogs within about thirty seconds. We became friends with her almost as quickly. We ended up staying on for a week after the sit finished. She invited us back for her birthday the following month. We’re still in contact now and consider her a genuine friend.

That kind of connection has happened more times than we can count. We have repeat homeowners we’ve sat for in multiple countries. We have homeowners who’ve become travel companions. House sitting builds a different kind of network — one built on trust and shared love of animals rather than common offices or mutual acquaintances.

We surveyed 125,000+ active homeowners and sitters to understand what the community looks like at scale — the data paints a fascinating picture of how this lifestyle actually works.

The connections you make through house sitting extend well beyond individual sits. Our guide to the strongest house sitting communities covers which platforms have the most active peer networks and how to use them to land better sits faster.

3. It Eliminated Our Biggest Cost Entirely

Saving money is one of the main reasons most people try house sitting. It’s one of the main reasons we kept going. Over five years of house sitting, we have saved over $150,000 in accommodation costs. That is not marketing language — that is what the numbers add up to when you compare our sits against equivalent Airbnb rates in the same locations.

But the accommodation saving is only part of it. A house sit gives you a fully equipped home — kitchen, laundry, Wi-Fi, often a car. The bills you stop paying add up to thousands more each year. Electricity, water, internet, council fees — none of it touches you when you’re sitting. We combined house sitting with building an online business, which meant every dollar we didn’t spend on accommodation was a dollar reinvested into what we were building.

While living and sitting in London and Ireland, we managed trips to 21 countries across Europe and Africa. Without the accommodation saving, that wouldn’t have been possible. If you want to understand the mechanics of how living completely rent and bill free actually works step by step, we’ve written a full guide.

If you’re weighing up which platform to join first, we’ve reviewed and ranked every major house sitting website based on our own experience. Not sure what each one costs? Our full platform pricing breakdown has every fee and current discount code in one place.

4. You Stop Visiting Places and Start Living In Them

We are obsessed with food. Local markets, wine bars, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the cheese shop the neighbourhood knows about but tourists don’t — this is what we travel for. And you cannot find these things on a long weekend.

House sitting gives you weeks, sometimes months, in a single location. That is enough time to find the good coffee, figure out the public transport, get to know your neighbours, and stop feeling like a visitor. We stayed in Rome for months — something that would have been financially impossible as tourists. We explored it the way Romans do. We found the places the guidebooks don’t mention. We ate more pizza and drank more natural wine than was probably advisable.

That depth of experience is what separates house sitting from conventional travel. You don’t tick a place off. You actually get to know it. Nomad List — one of the most widely used resources among long-term travellers — consistently ranks slow travel as the most sustainable and cost-effective way to explore the world. House sitting is exactly that, with free accommodation on top.

5. It Gave Us Back Something We Didn’t Realise We’d Lost

When we started travelling full time, one of the things that hit us hardest — and we weren’t prepared for it — was the absence of animals. We had both grown up with dogs and cats. That companionship had always been part of daily life, and losing it was a genuine gap.

House sitting gave it back completely. The morning dog walk that forces you outside before you’ve looked at your phone. The cat that decides your lap is its property for the afternoon. The routine that animals create — feeding times, walks, check-ins — that gives your day structure in a way that aimless travel never does. We have cared for dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, a turtle, and a yacht full of fish. Every animal has been its own experience. Every one has made the sit feel like home.

If building trust with animals is one of your strengths, house sitting might be the lifestyle for you. We’ve put together a complete walkthrough of every step involved in getting started — from choosing a platform to landing your first sit with no reviews.

The Honest Part Nobody Tells You

House sitting is not passive. It requires effort, preparation, communication, and the willingness to adapt when things don’t go to plan. We’ve had plumbing emergencies at midnight, animals that needed more care than the listing suggested, and the occasional homeowner who communicated differently than we’d hoped.

But in 60+ sits, we have had one cancellation, zero serious safety incidents, and more genuinely good experiences than we can count. The house sitting statistics back this up — the vast majority of sitters report their experiences positively, and repeat sits with the same homeowners are extremely common.

We have saved over $150,000. We have lived in 15 countries. We have cared for over 45 animals. We have made friends we couldn’t have made any other way.

That’s why we love it.

Ready to Start?

If this sounds like a lifestyle worth trying, the starting point is straightforward. Pick a platform, build a profile, and apply for your first sit. We’ve been doing this for close to a decade and we’ve put everything we know into one place to make it easier for you.

👉 Start your house sitting journey here