December 2025: New features coming soon

[Jenny]

Hi everyone!

Over the coming weeks, you will see new features coming to the Trusted Housesitters platform. Our goal is to help listings to be even better by making them easier for owners to complete, and easier for sitters to read.

We introduce these changes gradually so it’s possible that not everyone will see the new features at the same time.

Mandatory Room tagging

Moving forward, all new sits uploaded will require pictures of specific rooms in the home to be shared, including; the main living space, the bedroom to be used, the kitchen and main bathroom.

This helps sitters to have a clear view of the property before they arrive. Of course, we encourage owners to keep sharing those gorgeous views from the outside of properties too.

Arrival & Departure Times

To support clearer communication, owners will be asked to provide arrival and departure times for sitters. All times will be listed in local time.

EDIT: See more information here, feature went live Monday 15th Dec.

Clearer guidance when creating listings

New home owners will be given improved step-by-step guides when creating listings to help make your listing the best it can be.

Listings near you

We’re making it easier for home owners - especially those new to Trusted Housesitters - to view local listings. Seeing amazing sits near you can help inspire you with useful information to include in your listing.

New Required sections: Pet Care

We’re making more information to be ‘required’ such as the ‘Time alone’ field, which will be moved to the ‘Pet’ category.

This is to support clearer expectations of your pet’s needs, helping you to feel reassured while you’re away.

EDIT: See more information here, feature went live Thursday 18th Dec.

Whether it be through the forum, surveys or tracking usage, member feedback is a key factor in our platform development process and we think these features will support you to have even more fantastic sits.

[Maggie8K]

Thanks for the update, @Jenny. Sounds promising.

[Silversitters]

@Jenny -
These updates look very promising and it is good to see that what members have been asking for has been heard by THS and acted on .

I have a question about the mandatory section “How long can your pets be left alone for?”

This already exists for hosts creating listings but currently it is not visible to sitters.

So rather than solve a problem ,it has actually contributed to misunderstandings . When hosts complete this information , they naturally assume that sitters will be able to see it .

Can you confirm with MS that going forward with this new update sitters will be able to see this information on the listing before they apply ?

[GotYourBack]

@Jenny, thank you for the insight. Seems value-add changes Good luck on implementation.

Only suggestion we’d have on Pet Care is to include some reference to typical, everyday or similar language. Say “In everyday life, what total duration per day does you dog walk?”
We have had multiple instances of pet exercise being materially overstated by PP - which leads to surprises for HS and for pets, and a calorie deficit. In such cases perhaps PP estimate on the basis of maximum exercise dog has ever walked on a day; or highest daily time per week (some dogs walked little during week, lots at weekend); or exercise amount that PP wished they could receive. Darned if we know but it creates needless expectations and guesswork.

[Sunnybunny]

I am concerned that the “arrival & departure” times may affect the Sitter’s ability to apply for a sit that will start on the same day as a previous one finishes.

If the sits are close to each other a sitter is currently able to pop by to the later sit for a handover or to pick up keys from the host and to then go back to finish off and hand back to the host at the previous one.

[GotYourBack]

@Sunnybunny, we’re cautious about this too.

On upside, it encourages PP to identify upfront day and time of day for housesitter arrival. On downside, owner stipulation of this information creates expectations similar to that of calling out a tradesman. ugh

As full-time sitters, discussion of dates and times for arrival/departure are important parts of video call. Many PP have not even thought about it until the video call. We withdraw a meaningful portion of applications after video calls - with challenging date/time being a common factor. Equally, a ‘green flag’ for us are fabulous PP that express openness to date of arrival/departure - mindset of ‘feel free come a day early or leave a day late’. Yay.

We can absolutely imagine a situation where PP enters video call with an expectation that HS will arrive and leave on date/time per listing. This would be a tragic step backwards for us. For both parties, selecting and confirming a housesit is more nuanced than calling out a plumber.

Our subjective encouragement would be that listing state the possible days (PP option to provide a date range) and no time at all, for both HS arrival and HS departure.

[Crookie]

Hi @Jenny this is positive news. Can you please confirm that all owners will be made aware of this by email as there are only a small proportion of members on this forum.

Also, can you please clarify wherher the mandatory room tagging photos on all new sits also includes new dates listed for existing sit listings, not just new owner profiles.

[WeRPAWsome]

Thanks @Jenny — cautiously optimistic about these updates. The gradual rollout makes sense.

A question on the practical side: how will the new mandatory fields on HO listings (arrival/departure times, “time alone” in Pet Care, room-tagged photos) impact sitters when applying? Will there be corresponding fields or check boxes on the sitter side so both parties are working from the same baseline?

And while improved clarity in listings is always welcome, it’s worth saying that no system will replace the individual responsibility of both HO and HS to talk things through and make sure the fit — for everyone, two- and four-legged — is genuinely right.

[DMcat]

Thank you! Definitely a step in the right direction! Please ask the HO’s not to use selfies or pictures of their toilet as the cover picture. Both are major turn offs.

[ABGM]

Yay All sounds good to me – although I agree about the need for some flexibility on arrival/departure.
Now…
(deep breath, yet again, one more time for those in the back…)

When is TH going to start background-checking owners as well as sitters??

…wouldn’t this be in the interest of noob HOs getting more sitter applications? Some sitters might pass over somewhat-sparse no-reviews listings with maybe not much info, when they also don’t know anything about the people? Having all of the members background-checked has always seemed like a sensible thing to me

[Dace]

My guess would be that arrival time may be open to negotiation. The time given may be the ideal time for a personal handover, but a virtual handover may also be possible beforehand with arrival later than stated. I sit only for cats so the majority of my sits are with a virtual handover. Obviously, dog sitting may require a personal handover.

[Maggie8K]

The new requirements for arrival and departure should help people who seem to have no clue and don’t discuss such at the outset. And folks would still be able to negotiate, because life happens.

We’ve seen on the forum for example some people post while they’re on a sit and then arguing or debating what time they’re supposed to leave (or asking random people on the forum), rather than having had the discussion with the other party before ever agreeing to the sit.

And by extension, then some post, urging THS to set start and end times for everyone simply because they as individuals can’t manage what should be a normal discussion on their own.

[markhellemans]

This all looks very nice to me. Looking forward to it

[Elke]

I always let my sitters arrive the day before. Will it still be possible to do a listing from let’s say 11.03. to 20.03. and state that departure is on 12.03. at 9 a.m.?

[Snowbird]

@Jenny I have concern for the use of ‘main bathroom’ for a photo. It should refer to the bathroom to be used by the sitter, which is often not the main one. Also, it’s likely two photos are needed. Most importantly, being able to see if a bathtub also has a full shower. So many photos have the shower curtain covering everything. A photo of a bathroom sink only helps to know if the home may be cluttered.

Will the website also be able to display the notes added under photos? This can be confusing for owners as they understandably often make the assumption they are viewable, given they are on the app.

Arrival and departure times. There definitely needs to be an option to add notes to clarify things (although I would also do that on a video call). An example has already been given of a request for arrival the day before, which is quite common.

These changes are good, but also many cause confusion and misinformation if an allowance isn’t made for notes to be added.

[outdoorsy]

Yes ‘happy with virtual handover’ and ‘flexible re arrival time’ should be added. Otherwise it just encourages homeowners to be more picky than they otherwise would be.

Also a box for ‘require sitter to stay a night before we leave’ - it’s a no no for me, so would be useful to know

[petlover]

I really like these changes. While I agree that the arrival and departure times should be able to be modified/negotiated, on the other hand, we’ve had issues with homeowners who hadn’t purchased flights yet and hadn’t thought through exactly when they wanted us to arrive/depart. We also had one set of HO’s arrive home the day before the sit was supposed to end, and they didn’t even realize they were home early. Forcing HO’s to document arrival/departure expectations in the listing will be helpful, I think. They can always change the expectations after video chatting with prospective sitters.

[amhnola]

We have definitely felt like the exercise requirements stated by owners have been aspirational. More than once, they’ve returned to svelter pets.and at times, we’ve had to suggest increasing amounts fed.due to weight loss

[GotYourBack]

@amhnola, welcome to THS Forum. Thanks for sharing your experience. Certainly resonates with some of our housesits.

We now compliment PP WG instructions with our significant pet experience. Any major problems we escalate to PP. Minor observations (e.g. repeatedly hungry … increase kibble) then we’ll just apply judgement, monitor results and advise PP afterwards.