We just arrived at our first sit in Hamilton. Our other 2 are in Rotorua and Waikanae. Then we’ll head back through the US on our way to our summer sits back in Europe.
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We just arrived at our first sit in Hamilton. Our other 2 are in Rotorua and Waikanae. All north island.
If we head to the South Island on our break, maybe we could meet up.
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Thankyou for sharing your insights into your adventures! Amazing you managed back to back housesitting.
WE are now researching how to go about a similar type of adventure for 3-4 months in NZ with our two boys from Dec 23…
Do people recomend signing up to both THS and kiwihousesitting as we are struggling to find suitable sitting opportunity so far in advance…
@edwardsfamilyUK - I would say join Kiwihousesitters aswell as THS - We did 4 sits in NZ
13/11 - Fly-in
13/11-18/11 - AIRBNB
18/11 - 7/12 Gisbourne (Kiwi)
7/12 - 11/12 Sumner (THS)
11/12-15/12 - AIRBNB
15/12-15/01 Christchurch (THS)
15/01-16/01 AIRBNB
16/01 - 16/02 Napier( Kiwi)
16/02 - Fly out
Kiwihousesitters is not expensive to join, If you do join them before you do, ask @Smiley -I think she will have a referral code you can use for a bit of discount. of the membership fee
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Thankyou, that is really useful information . The closer the time comes, the more opportunity will arise Im sure
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Definitely sign up for both. I also heard of another site that’s NZ only (can’t remember the name but worth a Google) so if you’re doing a long trip, it’ll be worth it to diversify.
We’ve used both sites and have done 5 sits through Kiwi Housesitters (Rotorua, Wellington, Oamaru, Wanaka, Christchurch) and two sits through Trusted (both in Christchurch). We’ve been in NZ since December and will leave at the end of April.
I’d also recommend looking into buying a car as opposed to renting if you’ll be here a while. You can also take buses, but we found having our own car opened us up to sits we would not have be able to do otherwise.
Hopefully I’ll have all my blogs about NZ up in the next few months and can give you more insight into the experience.
Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any questions!
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Hi Edwards family UK!
I am from NZ living in Sweden and have just done 4 months in NZ. Fortunately for us, the major flooding that hit West Auckland (before the cyclone) and also the cyclone did not make casualties/victims out of us or our housesits. The worst we dealt with was helping my brother-in-law clean up all the fallen branches on his 600m driveway in Whangarei. Our housesit there escaped without damage, thank goodness.
With regard to housesitting companies th-ere, unlike Colin, we had no luck with Kiwi Housesitters as they were either too short or didn’t match our dates. There were lots and lots there though for all over the country.
We have had most luck with a company called The Housesitting Company. They are not too expensive and they have good insurance cover. They do police checks on all potential sitters and have great customer service. This is their website www.housesitters.co.nz We used them twice on this trip and Trusted Housesitters for our longest sit which was 6 weeks. Good luck!