Hello everyone1 I have sent a message enquiring about a housesitting gig with dates that are rapidly approaching, and I can see that there has been one other applicant, but it appears that the owner hasn’t viewed my message yet.
Is there a way to politely “nudge” the owner re: viewing my message? Or does anyone have any other suggestions for me as to what to do next?
Thank you!
You can always try. But they may not read it either. If you’re very interested you can state that , in case they do read it. Mention what makes you a good fit and what you can offer. None of this matters if they do not open the message. I tend to send one follow-up message saying I will remove my application since there is no interest. Sometimes they’ve said they are indeed interested. It can also be a red flag that they don’t communicate well. Moving on may be the best plan.
Thank you for the words of wisdom! Am I correct in saying that there is a limit of applying to only five housesits at any one time?
Hi @AmandaAndNolan - as a sitter there is no limit to the number of sits you can apply for.
Homeowners can receive up to five applications and their listing will automatically pause.
They then need to decline any sitters which they do not think are a good fit.
They can then unpause their listing and receive more applicants up to a maximum of five and so on and so on.
It was not always this way and was apparently brought in to give new sitters an improved chance of getting a sit and speeding up the response rate from homeowners. The jury is out on the ‘improvements’ but the changes are here to stay.
Yes, difficult to understand when dates are rapidly approaching. But I read something on this forum that an app might show messages as unread when they were read according to the web interface (or the other way around?).
Otherwise it may be best to move on and apply for other sits.
For sits that are further out in time, I have also had that a home owner did not read anything for a week. And then I suddenly got the sit 
Even though the Owner has not responded to you, you can go back into the message area and write another message to the Owner. The response times vary so much. Frustrating! You would think that they would want to get this done asap, but people are busy and tend to procrastinate! You never know.
When we first started, I would apply to Sits and excitedly wait for a reply. Well, often times, the replies never came. It was disheartening. Just move along and apply to other Sits!
As @Twitcher said no limits for you applying. Go crazy!
This is not unusual, in my experience, and a red flag I’d say. So, ensure you apply for other sits. I have sent another message to ‘nudge’ the owner which has made some respond.