We are new to sitting and wondered whether it is possible to reach out to people in a specific area that we want to visit without there being specific dates advertised.
Hello
The only way to open up a line of communication with the homeowner is applying to an active sit they have listed.
If you search a particular area, you can see sits that are not currently active, and you can open the listing and favorite it (pressing the heart icon.) Depending on the owner’s membership level, they get notified when someone does this, and they would be able to invite these people to apply for a future listing. You will also get a notification when this listing has new dates. You can’t choose specific dates to be notified of, however–you will get notifications of any listing by this HO.
You may sometimes see a sit you like but the dates don’t work for you–some sitters will apply anyway, letting them know they can’t do those dates, but would be interested in future ones. I personally don’t ever do that, but some have said this has led to invitations in the future. Some HO’s may not mind this, some might not like it.
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Short answer: no it isn’t…
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Thank you for your help. I’ve liked several non active sits in the area I’m looking to sit in the future in the hope someone reaches out to me.
I don’t think applying for dates that aren’t compatible would be helpful for those advertising as they could miss out on an application if my application then caused a pause in their process.
I’ll keep hoping that someone from northern Tasmania reaches out to us.
You are welcome @OdLou . Sounds like you already have a good idea of how everything works. Yes, I agree about not doing that especially for popular sits. If I was a HO, especially for a sit like that, I wouldn’t like getting those messages.
Many people say they do this then cancel their application so they don’t take up a space. I am curious though if that actually reduces the number of applicants if the listing is still open or it still gets recorded as one of the first five. In my experience of cancelling several applications when they have already been paused–the owners were taking too long to respond–the listing didn’t go live again.
So in this case of a listing already in review, it would seem that there wouldn’t be an automatic relist if applications go lower than five, and it would need to be manually unpaused.
I also wonder if this could have happened because there were actually more than 5 applications submitted originally since anyone who starts an application can still send it in, provided they don’t click away from the screen.
I’d be interested in getting some more information on how that works from someone in the know about that.
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I’ve just sent you a message
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I don’t the answer to your questions but I just think that as a HO who has experienced several sits, it can feel overwhelming when you have all the applications to sort through and make a decision and I wouldn’t welcome being approached by someone who isn’t available but is wanting to register a future interest.
I’ll just keep hoping that someone in northern Tasmania sees that I have saved/liked their profile and either reaches out or I get notification if and when they advertise their dates.
Good to chat
I don’t know if this helps but we have sent messages to several HOs for future sits in different countries and locations and said “please read and decline so you can accept other people” and they’ve all been received positively. Some have invited us later too. An HO can also only get 5 applications at a time now so they won’t ever be overwhelmed with sorting through them anymore. Good luck with Tazzy 
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