We’re retired couple been retired 5 years we live in Brighton UK our son and DiL live in Perth Australia. We’ve owned horses/dogs/small caged pets…. we’ve owned large houses and land but now live in a modern apartment.
My idea is to start doing sits in our local City to build reviews…
Q. How many reviews should I aim to get please?
Our aim is to house sit when we visit our son and DiL each time we’re in Perth rather than stay with them (restricting and it’s ok but they’re working full time). We’d like some independence and we would like to test the idea of moving to Perth in 10 years maybe.
Q. What advice would you give for our plan?
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Really you want as many great reviews as you can get, within reason, but once you’ve got about 5, and they’re all great, you start to look like a reliable trustworthy sitter.
Depending on when you want to visit Perth, and where you’re willing to stay, the plan is definitely workable. Be willing to take less-attractive sits at first. Off-season sits, sits with multiple dogs or with livestock, sits that are in low-demand areas, sits where the house doesn’t look fantastic.
Favorite every sit you’d be willing to consider, both in your local area and in Perth (search on the area, then click the little heart on everything, including those not currently looking for sitters, and set your notifications to notify you.)
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My acceptance rate went up a lot immediately after my first review. (And my first sit was not local. It was a Christmas sit but it was attractive, quite centrally in Brussels, two small dogs without medical issues or other problems.)
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Honestly, one review is enough! Once I had one good review, I had no issues getting subsequent sits.
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Hi Bonny
One of your Twitter followers here! I thought you were already a housesitter!
There is lots of information if you search the forum to help you.
It’s always advised that prospective new sitters do short sits in their local area to get reviews. I personally didn’t. I got friends and family to write references for when I’d looked after their pets and managed to get my first sit quite quickly in Sevenoaks area (I live in Cheltenham) so not exactly local.
I think it does help being mature, having owned your own homes and you’ve had lots of experience with animals. You need to write a good profile with lots of pics.
If you wish to discuss further by all means message me and I’ll disclose my name!
I’ve recently returned from 16 months housesitting & roadtripping in Australia & New Zealand. Besides THS I also joined two other websites and used Facebook to find two sits, but that wouldn’t be my favourite choice!
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We’re in our 50’s and 60’s in the UK, with our son living overseas, and we don’t want to put him out too much, when we want to stay for longer, he’s got his own life.
We only started pet sitting last spring and we’ve been fully booked none stop since then, and busy until 2025.
We built up local reviews first, and you are much more likely to get those sits anyway, as you are from the same area/banter-wise. We only needed about 3 reviews before we realised that most of the sits we wanted, we got! Both in the UK and overseas.
We’ve already got an overseas sit that we will be returning to later this year, and four other ones overseas lined up, and there are others that have asked but we don’t have availability for their dates.
You can build up reviews fast if you do a few shorter sits, just a 2/3 days, so you can build them up quite fast, just over a week or two.
If you do some last minute sits, you are more likely to get accepted with no reviews, as there are less sitters applying for those ones, so less competition.
The one bit of advice I would give when you eventually apply for overseas sits is explain your son lives there. They will understand you have a real reason to be in the area, and you have a real reason to return periodically, so the same HO’s know you may be able to return to them too, which is a huge bonus.
You’re more than welcome to DM me if you need any help.
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Yes we’ve house sat privately and had house sitters ourselves when we had a big house and had horses but this was by local friends. We sat a heritage house in Tasmania for a month in 2020. Please have a look at my my profile which I’ve just done to see what you think….
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Hi @BonnyinBrighton
You are in a great place to pick up some local sits, Brighton is really popular on trustedhousesitters.
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Hi Bonny
The link you’ve attached is to your Brighton tours link. You need to attach your THS profile. Here’s how to do it, it’s quite easy (if I could do it you can!):
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Thank you 
I’ve just joined the Basic membership so currently attempting to create my profile there…. but stuck as I can’t find my Airbnb profile url in the app.
Basic membership is fine. No need to worry about Airbnb profile atm
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Just waiting now for the 5* references to pile in….
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Well of course they will! 
That is probably easier in the web interface.
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As I set myself the task today of reading what sitters write in reviews across a range of sits- to learn more as a newbie before I do my first sit (I’ve already been accepted for two sits locally with a further three applications pending review). I’m puzzled why there might be say 4 five star detailed reviews but 3 sitters who wrote no review at all. What does this mean please?
One can only guess.
There was this thing of the “pet-only reviews”. Those may look detailed at first sight, but all details about the home or about the owners would be missing.
Or it is just a few of their sitters not leaving a review.
@BonnyinBrighton sometimes if it is a repeat sitter they don’t write a review each and every time .
Also for sits that took place several years ago there was not so much emphasis on doing a review .
You can investigate even further by clicking on the sitter to see if they wrote reviews for other sits that they did ( see the reviews that they have been given and then see if they also wrote a review for the HO )
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I highly recommend you use Aussiesitters as well.
We just did 3 months in Australia and the lack of sits on THS, how quickly they went away, and the rush/ panic of the 5 applicant rule made us want a backup plan.
Aussie sitters doesn’t charge the owner, so it seems more popular. Sitter charge is not bad. I found that aussiesitters don’t give as much info, sometimes no pictures at all, but we would apply and then inquire and we were never surprised with anything bad.
Having 2 sites meant that my husband and I could also do 2 sits that overlapped a day or 2. Overall we probably did 50/50 between the sites, and I’ll do it again in the future!
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It’s actually called aussiehousesitters
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Thank you for the great advice. We will definitely join the Aussie one too as it sounds like a good strategy. Do you think this also applies to Perth and WA with it being on the west coast and so far away from everywhere else? I’m seeing a lot of options on TSH for Perth particularly in their winter/ our summer so we’d probably just adjust our family visits to coincide with when there were more choices of sits in the area.