House Sitting or Airbnb? 4 Reasons To House Sit
You’re dreaming of quitting your job.
You’ve already left your job and are wondering how to make long-term traveling sustainable financially and energetically.
Shocking Airbnb prices pop up in your favorite destinations.
You’ve heard of house sitting, but is it legitimate? And what about house sitting vs. Airbnb?
In our experience, becoming house-sitters has been better for a long-term travel or digital nomad lifestyle.
If you already love house sitting abroad or nearer to home, use this link and THS12SAVER code at checkout for Trusted Housesitters.
List of Airbnb or House Sitting Pros and Cons
We’ll get into the details in a minute, but here’s an overview of house sitting vs. Airbnb for long-term travelers:
Airbnb Pros
- No extra responsibilities
- Rarely interact with hosts (also a con, depending on your personality)
- Clear photos of the house or apartment
Airbnb Cons
- You pay rent, and it’s often expensive
- It can be hard for two people to work in a small space
- Reviews are sometimes misleading
- Ethical questions about its impact on communities
- Lack of community interaction
House Sitting Pros
- Often better workspaces—or at least more space!
- You don’t pay rent in exchange for a place to live
- Cute pets who also make you an instant local
- See hidden travel destinations and explore a new area
- Meet wonderful hosts and neighbors
House Sitting Cons
- Reviews sometimes omit key details about house or pets
- Less control over start and end dates
- Additional responsibilities—though these vary widely between sits
In my mind, the pros of house sitting outweigh those of Airbnb, but everyone’s circumstances are different.
Let’s dive into the details.
1. House Sitting or Airbnb: Work and Living Space
Imagine you’re planning to spend a few months in Madrid.
You and your partner are looking to rent somewhere for a max of $1500 a month. Even with monthly rates, it will be hard to find a place that has more than one workspace.
Now imagine flipping through potential house sits in Madrid. Instead of a crowded apartment in a noisy neighborhood on Airbnb, you find a villa near a park with two dogs.
Which would you choose?
If you’re traveling with someone else, like a partner, then having separate space is essential — both for work and alone time. It’s very hard to achieve this with monthly rentals. It’s doable but not ideal.
What About Other People’s Clutter?
If you’re visual like me, other people’s clutter can be very challenging. The same goes for a monthly rental, however. You need to look at the photos carefully.
House sitting has a slight edge here, however, because you can ask for a tour when you have a video call with the host before agreeing to the sit. You can usually get a sense of what it’s really like from that call. It’s important to do this because homeowners sometimes post real estate photos of their home on the ad rather than the house in its “natural” state.
So what if you arrive at the house sit and it’s bursting with clutter? You just find ways around it. You can (a) not use the cluttered room, or (b) take photos of how it looked (so you can put it back in the same way) and move it around to suit your needs.
If you arrive at a rental and it’s jammed with stuff, there’s not much you can do about it. And you’re out of pocket for the rent.
2. House Sitting or Airbnb: Travel Housing Expenses
Housing costs are one of the largest lines in your budget, whether or not you travel full time.
Why not cut it so you can work less and save more?
Avoiding accommodation costs allows you to see much more of the world. For example, we love traveling in the United Kingdom (especially by train!), but that would be a ruinous proposition if we were living in Airbnbs.
Strangely enough, house sitting means we often choose more expensive countries over less expensive countries. For example, we still haven’t made it to Albania (it’s been on my list since at least 2001) because there are so few house sits. Though Airbnbs are cheap in Albania, we’d still have to pay rent, whereas in a more expensive country like Ireland, we wouldn’t pay rent at all.
Look at my 2021 nomad expense report to see what a difference it makes.
3. House Sitting or Airbnb: House Sitting For Pets
While some house sits don’t involve becoming a pet sitter, the vast majority do.
And yes, pet care can bring many challenges for anyone, including health and sensory challenges.
Assuming you don’t have an allergy, I recommend you begin with cats.
Cats are ideal because they’re quiet, independent, relatively odor-free, and can be left alone slightly longer than dogs — especially indoor-outdoor cats.
Our most challenging cat thought he was a dog. He paced, meowed constantly, and had to be taken on a walk in the garden — on a lead.
But you’ll usually be sitting for cats who think they’re cats. A great place to start.
Now we arrive at dogs. Cats come with small apartments and dogs come with large homes.
I have two major challenges with dogs: barking and odor.
What About Pet Sitting With Barking Dogs?
Hosts often forget how much their dogs can bark — it’s become white noise for them.
If barking bothers you as much as it bothers me (a lot!), here are three ways to help:
1. Research which breeds bark less.
2. Read the house sit ad carefully. Watch out for words like “vocal,” “excitable,” or “anxious.”
3. Ask your host about the dog’s temperament during the interview. Bringing up the dog’s social behavior can allow you to talk about barking. If you ask, “how much does your dog bark,” you can offend the homeowner, and you might not get an accurate answer.
4. If you have any doubts, ensure the home is large enough that you can escape the barking, if necessary.
What About Dealing With Pet Smells and Odors?
Let’s not sugarcoat this: you need to deal with poop and stinky food.
Beyond that, if you’re sensitive to dog odor, research breeds that smell less (e.g., poodles), but also notice whether the host seems fussy — in a good way — about dog grooming. Even typically smelly dogs won’t create problems if the owner grooms them properly.
My favorite dog was a Goldendoodle who rarely barked and had absolutely no odor.
And now we’ve arrived at the upsides of pets over a sterile, characterless Airbnb. If you like animals, pets can be companions and very calming. We form a little family during the months we’re at the sit.
4. House Sitting or Airbnb: Connection to Community
Locals Already Know Your Pets
Walking the dog in the morning immediately makes you a local.
We house sat a lovely ridgeback mix for a month in Italy this year. Every day, we’d walk past a shop where the owner would come out and coo, “Ciro!” She’d give him a treat, speak to us briefly, and then we’d be on our way.
Many people recognize your dog in smaller communities and will greet and welcome you. It offers an immediate sense of being in a place and being able to ask others for help should you need it.
House-Sitting Hosts As Local Guides
Depending on the hosts and length of sit, they’ll give you all the inside scoop on where to go, where to eat, where to shop, and even local gossip. Hosts have taken us to lunch and dinner. They’ve even shopped for us or driven us to the local supermarket. They introduce us to friends, neighbors, and the community. This rarely happens at an Airbnb.
Since my other half loves meeting other people and honing his language skills, he’s taken full advantage of this aspect of sitting. At another house sit in Italy, our lovely large house was a few miles from the grocery store. During the three months we were sitters, a neighbor became close friends with my partner and drove him to the store regularly. He practiced his Italian and did our grocery shopping — and I got to stay at home and write. Perfect!
This same family invited us to pick grapes and help make wine during their annual grape harvest. How many times will that happen with an Airbnb?
FAQ About Housesitting
Is house sitting free?
Yes and no. Unless you arrange it directly with a host, you’ll pay a small subscription fee to belong to one of the house sitting websites (see my rabbit hole resource page for more info). This gives you and the host peace of mind, which is worth it for the small fees you pay.
Some house sit hosts may ask you to pay utilities, but we never have and never plan on doing so. It makes the relationship much more transactional and also devalues what we provide as house and pet sitters (take a look at the daily rate for a kennel or cattery!).
The one exception to this for us is if we house-sat anywhere for more than three months, we might discuss some utility costs. So far, the most we’ve stayed anywhere was a three-month house sit in Italy.
Do house-sitting jobs pay?
Some do, but they’re generally listed on other kinds of sites. We never ask for money, but we won’t turn down a meal or a ride from the train station!
Beyond it fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship, you’ll run into visa issues if you’re an international house-sitter. If you’re locally based, though, you could build up a great house or pet-sitting business.
What are house sitting costs? How much does housesitting cost per day?
We only pay the annual subscription fees for the 4 house sitting platforms where we’re active.
As for household items like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and paper towels, it’s decided on a case-by-case basis. You can discuss it with the host.
The one sneaky hidden cost is arriving and departing a house sit. The host often offers to pick us up from the train station, but sometimes they cannot do that. In those cases, you’ll need to be aware that a taxi might be your only option. Consider how you’ll get too and from a sit before agreeing to it.
How do people find a house-sitter?
Good question! As house-sitters, we wait and respond to ads that hosts place themselves via a house sitting app or platform.
After a while, you build up a group of hosts that regularly travel, so you can put together repeat housesits. These are discussed before the host places an ad.
Is it better to become international house-sitters or to stay near home?
Why not do both? Actually, it’s great to experiment with house sitting by trying it in your hometown or nearby. You can test the waters and also get your first reviews.
We love international house sitting, but it was obviously challenging during the pandemic. You’ll need to do more careful planning and also keep travel costs in mind. It’s often best to plan clusters of house sits in one area or country and then slow travel somewhere else.
The Bottom Line: House Sitting or Airbnb?
In truth, I occasionally crave the anonymity and lack of responsibility of a monthly rental (but not the price). But it’s quite rare, and within a week or so of moving there, I usually miss having furbabies around.
House sitting is worth trying because of the unique spaces, budget savings, pets, and local community experience.
I recommend surfing the various platforms and enjoying flipping through all the amazing options.
Why not give it a go?
If you want to try domestic or international house sitting, I recommend starting with Trusted Housesitters. Follow this link and use THS12SAVER code at checkout (use the link and code together, otherwise it won’t work). Trusted Housesitters has a great house sitting app so it’s easy to track new listings.
In another article, I’ll address how to become a house-sitter, including specific questions such as what house-sitters do. You can also see all the best house sitting websites I’ve tried under my Rabbit Holes section.