It came up in another thread about age. But I have sat for some younger people in one bedroom apt or condo. All three wanted really early arrival, one 6 am, other 7 am. One was late departure.
You cannot stay over in a one bedroom apartment, so you have to have accomodations before and after. So many said age is not an issue but for many young HOs, their apartment size doesn’t allow stay overs while they are still there. Doesn’t that affect your ability to sit for younger people?
Hi @Huronbase,
We had that same situation twice.
SIngle lady on their 50s and a couple mid30s.
On another occasion, a girl, also in her 30s went to her friend’s place so we could have the privacy we needed (without us even asking).
I’m afraid the situation isn’t directly related to age.
Or… we could debate what age range qualifies as “younger people”! Just kidding 
This is just not true.
I often have an early departure, and I do not do no-contact handoffs. I always offer accommodation the night before - they get the bedroom and I take the couch. It does not matter to me, as I sleep on the couch before an early departure anyway (no way I’m making the bed at 4am!!). Slightly more than half my sitters have taken me up on it.
I know plenty of sitters are uncomfortable with this level of engagement with an HO and would not apply or accept a sit with this kind of start, but it doesn’t mean it’s not possible!
ETA: I am not young, either! 
I haven’t found this to be related to age.
All 3 ‘wanted’ a 6/7am arrival??? Ouch! We’ve never ever had any host that expected us to arrive at those times. I think 8.30am is the earliest we’ve done, which was fine for us anyway.
All of us know the type of accommodation we’re going into at the point of applying, so if it’s a small place, arranging to collect the keys etc on a prior date is much easier.
On a couple of occasions we’ve even popped in for the keys/handover more than a month in advance while we’re in their area, on other occasions the keys have been typically left if it’s cats for us to gain entry ourselves, or they’ve had family/neighbours do the handover.
Maybe it’s the way you’ve put yourself across that let’s them think 6am is even an option, instead of finding a solution between you both. It needs to be a win-win.
We haven’t found that age had anything to do with it, so maybe there’s just a higher concentration of younger ones in your particular area… perhaps swap areas 
In my case, I just experienced a situation where the person I was supposed to stay with told me at the very last minute that I needed to arrive a day earlier. That meant I had to pay for a hotel night, and since the area is quite expensive, no hotel was under 200 euros per night. So, on top of the flight ticket, I also had to cover the cost of a hotel stay, which was completely out of my budget.
Well, in the end, when I told the woman I couldn’t confirm just yet because I needed to look for flights and a hotel stay which I hadn’t expected to cover she told me to forget it, that she no longer wanted me to come because she was looking for someone with things “more figured out.” Well, I’m sorry, but to me it was clear: I was happy to go to her home and take care of her cats, but not to go and pay for a hotel on top of that. 
Exactly…In the houses where I’ve stayed before, when the owners had an early departure, they always offered me the option to stay in the bed while they slept on the sofa which I think is the most reasonable thing to do. After all, this is supposed to be an exchange: stay in my home and take care of my pet. It’s not supposed to mean “pay for a hotel night.” The whole point of this platform is to allow people to travel and stay in places without having to pay for accommodation, because the exchange is based on pet care. On my opinion…
One was in Austin, one in Atlanta and one in Toronto. I get up very early so that doesn’t bother me. I had a sit in Atlanta already, so I had arranged to leave early, as the HO was coming home early. So I could get to the other sit at 6 am. Yes, I had walked and fed the other dogs before leaving. And washed the sheets. Toronto it was a woman and her boyfriend. Sofa wouldn’t work for them. They were lucky I had a place to stay in Toronto so I could show up at 7 am easily and stay until 6 pm. She never gave me a review, though I know she was happy with dog care. I think it just slipped her mind. The one in Austin I had booked knowing I was coming from LA and would have to do a hotel night. I got to Austin around midnight.
Time to consider how the question is phrased to the HO.
Instead of “what time would you like me to arrive?” maybe try “I can arrive between _____ and ____.”
It won’t always work but it may help
In my experience, hosts who have very early departures, and aren’t expecting the sitter to meet with them the day before they leave, are fine with the sitter arriving after they have left.
I can recall a couple of times we have met hosts in one-bedroom places the day before to get keys and and go over things because they were leaving very early the next day, but we were already planning on being in the area at least the day before, so our paying for accommodation nearby the day prior was not in direct response to this request.
If it was required of us, I most likely wouldn’t take the sit. But perhaps in certain circumstances I would, like if I was trying to fill in dates as a result of a cancellation and my options were more limited.
As for late departures, I have found that hosts are either fine with us leaving well before they are due to arrive home or make the day after their arrival the official end date of the sit --this seems to be more common when people are taking long international flights that may have them getting home very late, and we have no issues with that.
As for renting a hotel room the day the sit ends because the hosts wanted us to stay later into the evening and would expect us to leave when they arrived because they don’t have room to have us stay, in most cases, I probably wouldn’t accept the sit.
An exception might be if I knew ahead of time I would probably have small gaps in my schedule where I would likely end up booking a hotel anyway, such as between two sits that are in different countries.
But if I was traveling in an area where it is easy to find back to back sits with no gaps, like the US or UK, I wouldn’t needlessly pay for a hotel for that night when I could almost certainly get to another sit that same day.
This is a good example of why it is important to discuss arrival and departure times prior to confirming.
I have only stayed in one bedroom places these 3 times. Otherwise, I have come the night before and/or stayed an extra night when they arrived late. These sits worked for me time and place wise. Austin sit was a mistake since I had been on holiday in Bali too close to the sit but had booked the sit earlier. Hence, the travel issue. But live and learn. All sits were perfectly fine otherwise, or better than fine.
I am a very early riser. I got up as a teen at 4, even in the summer, since I was a competitive athlete and had to go train early. Then I used to get up at 4 and run 5 miles before I needed to be at work 7:30, which meant coming back, showering and getting on the subway to go downtown, NYC. Then I got in the habit of taking the dog out very early for my jog on the boardwalk in Toronto. Lots of dog people out in Toronto then. Early doesn’t bother me. Staying til midnight does.
I look at that from the other angle ie I would think it would affect the owner’s success at getting people willing to sit for them, not the ability of sitters getting to those sits.
Point of the question. It seems most people wouldn’t do it. It worked for me. The sits were perfectly fine and I had the ability to do it, so I took the sits.
The only time I’ve had an issue filling a sit has been over the end of year holidays (and I still found a sitter). There are a lot of sitters for whom this is not a big deal.