How To Use House Sitting To Help You Save Your Deposit

[youtube id="SbQbWq6aoks" align="left" mode="lazyload" maxwidth="500"] House sitting can be a great way to stop paying rent and help you save your deposit. Here is a basic guide to house sitting. More and more people these days are finding it extremely difficult to save a deposit either to purchase their own home or to go ahead and purchase an investment property. One of the options to save money to help you achieve that goal is actually house sitting. Reducing your rent by sitting in someone else's house basically rent-free. So, today, I have Robyn on from comparehousesitting.com.au to talk about this new trend that is happening where people are house sitting as a way to save their deposit. Ryan: Hey Robyn, thanks for coming on today. Robyn: Good day, Ryan. Ryan: So, why don't you talk through what exactly house sitting is for those people who aren't completely aware of it. Robyn: Sure. House sitting is a booming worldwide trend where homeowners open their home to house sitters to live in while they are away and care for their property, home, gardens, whatever they have. It might be just an apartment with a cat. And particularly, caring for their animals. This enables animals to remain in their familiar environment and not have to be put into pet prison and be cared for and loved and have their familiar routine and it doesn't cost anybody a cent. The homeowner doesn't pay the house sitter and the house sitter doesn't pay the homeowner anything because it's a fair exchange – a mutual exchange of services. House sitting, the communities are made up of people who cooperate for mutual benefit, rather than financial gain. And, from my experience, it's a really nice way to live. Ryan: Yeah. And people who have pets and who want to go on holidays, it can be very difficult to find accommodation that will accept your pet. So if you put your pets in those pet hotels or pet prisons, as you called them, they can be quite expensive. I remember my mother-in-law needed to do it and it was like, $40 or $60 a day or something like that, and that was to have her dog go and stay with another family. It can be very expensive so I understand why people would want to have people come and house sit and look after their pets. Because it saves them money, allows them to go on holidays. And then, obviously, for the person house sitting, they get free accommodation, basically, in exchange for looking after pets or the gardens or the house, etc. So, obviously, we can see that this can be very beneficial. Did you say that this is a trend and more and more people are house sitting these than they used to? Robyn: It's a booming worldwide trend and particularly booming in Australia because people are increasing home ownership. People are living longer, they're more healthy, they're traveling and they're internet savvy. Also increased mobility in the workforce, more and more people are location independent, work-from-home; which is perfect for homeowners because a lot of homeowners do like the house sitter to be around quite a bit. But, that's all negotiable. That's not always the case. Often, in a city, there are homeowners who just want someone living, coming and going out of their home. They may not even have pets or they may just have a pussy cat. You can go to work full time because the homeowners go to work full time and the animals are accustomed to being home alone. So, yeah, there's all sorts of house sitters for all sorts of reasons and the house sitting websites featured on my site – Compare House Sitting. They're really easy to follow. You can put your preferences in, the dates, whether you want the location in the city or in the country. And it's a win-win-win situation, I say. It's a win for the homeowner, a win for the house sitter and a win for the pets. Ryan: I think in the past, with house sitting, it used to be just friends or friends of friends. If you were going away, you'd try and get one of your friends to stay at your house to look after your pet. But now, obviously, with introduction of things like Airbnb, people are more happy to have other people stay in their homes. It's becoming more commonplace. And so, there's now a bunch of websites out there that can connect people who want to house sit with people who are offering out their houses for sitting. So, if you go to comparehousesitting.com.au, there is a tab that I clicked on called, "Compare Websites" and you can go ahead and you can see the different websites on there. One of the things that I would worry about if I was house sitting, obviously, having free accommodation is great, that can help me save a lot of money. Are these generally short term house sitting arrangements? Like, staying for a week? And then, what do you do in-between one house to the next if you are the house sitter? Robyn: I'm very glad you asked that question. That's an interesting question, Ryan, because this is something that is not well understood. I have been house sitting Australia for 5 years. It started as initially, a stop-gap measure between vacating my lovely little flat on the seashore in Manly and deciding where to live to move out of Sydney. I commenced house sitting to look at other areas. Sorry, I'll get to your – I'm not addressing completely. Ryan: No, no. It's good. I like to... Robyn: To look at other areas outside Sydney and live in them and experience them for a while with the view to moving there. But, it just kept going. Now, to answer your point, I moved 4 times last year. I had 4 sits of 3 months. All in beautiful locations, beautiful homes, gorgeous animals, lovely homeowners, all for free, all amazing! Ryan: So are you house sitting right now as we record this? Robyn: I am. I don't expect to be doing it for too much longer. But, every house sit I do, there's new things that become evident, new issues and I'll be addressing all these things on my site in free information. But, I will be doing some e-books and having them for sale on specific issues. Ryan: So, with your experience, you said you moved 4 times in the last year. So you sat at 4 places. Were they all within the same region or have you moved all over Australia? Robyn: No. I'm staying in Sydney, I'm in Sydney. My house sitting buddy works as a hire car driver. So, he's doing from Sydney airport so we need to be in Sydney. On house sitting sites, you can search different criteria. You can search by area, the dates, whether you want pets or no pets and type of pet. We look to prefer to house sit by the ocean because that's what we're familiar with. Ryan: Yeah. Why wouldn't you? It'd be great to have free accommodation on the ocean. Robyn: If you can, you know, if you can – and you can. Ryan: That's the thing. To rent a 2-bedroom apartment in Manly or on the beach anywhere, I'm originally from Cronulla in Sydney, you're looking at $500, $600 or more a week for a 2-bedroom place. Robyn: A 2-bedroom? $800 now. It's crazy. Ryan: Yeah. And so, to get that for free, obviously, $800 times by 52 weeks, you're looking at upwards of $40,000 a year or something that you could be saving. Robyn: Plus utilities! Ryan: Oh, you don't have to pay electricity or water? Robyn: No. Ryan: Oh, that is so good! Robyn: Yeah. It is amazing! I'm sort of itching to make a point before I lose it because it's just so lovely. Quite a few homeowners that I speak with in the last year, they are looking for a house sitter now because they no longer have their regular house sitter who they'd had maybe for 4 years who has now bought their own home. These are all Gen Y who are house sitting to save a home. They might live at home for free in some cramp share accommodation but look to house sit so they can move out and have their own space and they just have that other place as to go to in-between. Maybe to store their things. They might live at home for free in some cramp share accommodation but look to house sit so they can move out and have their own space and they just have that other place as to go to in-between. Maybe to store their things. Ryan: Do you have a lot of in-between time between houses? Robyn: I don't have any. Ryan: No? How do you line that up? Is that stressful? Robyn: It can be. But, I do have it down to a fine art and I will sharing this information on my website. It's difficult – house sitting is seldom [inaudible 9:42] perfectly. From to time, when we started, we had somewhere to stay in-between. But, that's really, really hard moving out, cleaning up, moving out, moving somewhere else and then moving again a few days later. Oh my goodness, that is really hard work. Because it's too averse, we overlap. My house sitting buddy, tomorrow, about to go to another house sit. He'll be there a week. I'll be here in Clovelly, actually, lovely downtown Clovelly. Not downtown, up by the beach. And, I'll stay here and clean up and get out of here and move gradually into the other place where we'll be for a month. We go back to the same homeowners about 4 months of each year. We go back to the same homeowners about 4 months of each year. Because  a lot of people go away the same time every year, that is so nice because it's like going home. You know the people, you know the house. You just go back. You don't even see each other, you just move in and out in the dead of night. It just all works beautifully. But, I think I missed a point. What do I want to say? Oh yes. The point I wanted to make was, these homeowners who I've spoken with particularly in the last year, who have said, Oh, they're looking for a house sitter now because their previous one that they'd had for 4 years has now bought a home and they're no longer available. Because of my website, I probed on trying to get to the bottom of things for my website. These people, most homeowners do prefer someone to be around a lot,