I am new here, just had my first sit in NYC with good review. I am going to be volunteering my time in Frankfurt, Germany this summer working with refugee children. There is a HO there whose profile states they like to return to USA for travel. I feel like we are a good match. I do not see how to message them if they have not posted any dates needed yet. Further to my question can I just put my request for a house/pet sit here or where? Thank you!
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Welcome, Allison!
You can message them only if they’ve got an open sit listed… and then you have to ‘apply’ for that sit and then rescind your application.
it’s not prohibited (therefore, allowed?!) so if you find HOs that have listings, go for it i guess?!
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Hi @Allison and welcome to the forum. There isn’t a system to contact homeowners when they don’t have an active listing. I would suggest you create a saved search on the app of your preferred location and date range. Then anytime a new listing is posted for that criteria, you will receive a notification on your phone. Make sure the necessary notifications are set on your phone. Vanessa gives excellent help with this in her post:
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Thanks Snowbird I will do what you said. Is there a place here to just make a post saying I need sits for July-August in the Frankfurt, Germany area? I guess only people reading the forum would see that and the chances of their being in Frankfurt would be minimal, is that right?
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Thanks Miss Chef, I felt a little conflicted about it but did just what you said.
Hi @allison You’re correct that your exposure here would be minimal. Also, if all forum members posted their availability or listings, you can imagine how those posts would overwhelm the forum and take away from the core concepts of the forum.
You can embed your sitter profile in your forum username. Here are the instructions:
Thank you Snowbird, I can see this forum is a bit complex, having a life of it’s own! …I will invest more soon in doing all of that. thanks for all the feedback!
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I have reached out to a home owner once to let them know we would be interested in future dates. They were polite about it and said to keep an eye open for future dates posted. This was before we had the favourites option.
We had an interesting turn on this topic last week… A home owner wanted to reach out to us for some future undetermined dates and so they created a one fake night sit for this month and invited us to it, said to ignore the dates, and then asked us to keep them in mind when we start planning our next trip to their area. They are flexible and will work around our schedule rather than the other way around.
After our conversation (to which we agreed keep them in mind when we start planning again in mid-summer), she rescinded the invitation and cancelled the sit so people wouldn’t apply for it.
I thought this was a clever workaround for home owners to reach out to sitters when they don’t have specific dates, and indicates that having a method for contacting owners/sitters outside of dates might be useful in some situations.
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Kelownagurl,
That is very clever indeed! I guess THS is protecting home owners from being pestered by interested sitters by the way this is set up. Is there something in our profiles that the HO can see as a pop-up that we want to sit in certain places? I have to go back and look at my own to see if I did such a thing. Thanks for your interesting reply!
I think they probably contacted us because we had favourited their sit. In my first paragraph of our profile, I outline our plans for the year primarily for sitters who might contact us about sits, so they could see we might be available.
@Allison in your profile you select your preferred countries. There isn’t an option for selecting certain areas within any country. However, you can add any details into your profile.
Great suggestion, thank you again!
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Aha, good idea to mention favorite places into the profile, I will tweak mine, thank you so much!
If you know your dates in Germany you can put them in your availability calendar (I know, no everyone looks at them but at least you can point them out to HOs if approached). Then, go into your profile and change your location to Frankfurt. (you can change your location as often as you want). This way any HO who is looking for someone in their area will see that you will be there at the time stated. Of course if you are applying for other sits in the meantime you will need to explain in your application that you are not currently in Frankfurt but rather, where you are at the time. . Does this make sense? 
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But so it is possible to write to an owner who doesn’t have dates posted? Another comment above says it isn’t.
@Lauraa The exception to being able to reach someone who does not currently have an active listing is if you have already messaged them in the past. If the homeowner is in your inbox, then you can continue or restart a conversation with them, if they have a current membership.
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@Lauraa my guess is that @Kelownagurl originally reached out to the homeowner when they did have an active listing. The rest of her post relates to the owner reaching out to her, in which case they would have an established contact that they could continue. That’s my take on it anyway.
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Yes, that’s it exactly. Sorry I wasn’t clear.
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Shame there isn’t such a system. It would be great to hear from motivated sitters. I wish I could help out.
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