Hello
Welcome to THS and it sounds like you are setting up for a fun adventure. Just a couple of things to keep in mind.
THS has a filter for ‘family friendly’ sits so you can know right away if someone is open to hosting children. Though even in this sub category of hosts, they may have their own preferences as far as the number and age of the children. As for applying for sits without this filter, and that don’t specifically mention this issue, I am not sure if that is something sitters with families do regularly, and if so, find success.
Generally speaking, sitting with children can limit opportunities whether it is because people are not comfortable having them in the home for a variety of reasons or don’t have the space to host families.
There are people that do it successfully so it is certainly possible.
As for where to go, it is important to keep in mind that sits in certain regions are not as common. Places like Mexico and Central America aren’t super common but they aren’t necessarily super rare either. Costa Rica and Panama have the most opportunities as far as Central America goes–lots of people retire there, particularly Americans. South American sits are pretty rare.
One thing to consider when planning is how reliant you are on housesitting for your accommodation needs.
If for example, you wanted to travel to that region for a whole year and you just lined up one or two sits to start before heading over, hoping to fill your calendar along the way, that may be difficult and you could have lots of gaps, perhaps longer ones, in your schedule.
This is especially true if traveling with a family because fewer opportunities will probably be available to you from the outset.
But if you were traveling somewhere like the UK, you could easily do something like that since there are so many sits on a regular basis.
I have done a few sits in Panama and Costa Rica and we really like it there. We were there last year–all sits in the mountains and the weather was great. Didn’t need AC in either place. This was from around mid March to through early August. If you go to these places in the rainy season, especially the last couple of months of it, it can rain quite heavily, especially in certain areas. So be sure to do your research about that to have a sense of what you may encounter in a given area.
Another thing to consider for this region is many people, especially in Costa Rica, live in areas where a car is necessary–usually a 4 wheel drive–and it seemed like many hosts did not offer up one to use, meaning you would need to rent your own.
There were many sits I passed on applying to there because of this–lots of places looked lovely but I didn’t want to go badly enough to take on such an expense. Though you will find people that do offer their cars to sitters–our hosts in Panama did as well as one of our hosts in CR.
As far as Europe goes, the Netherlands is probably one of the more popular countries for listings. If it is possible, you might consider doing some sits there to build up your reviews–perhaps you can find some shorter ones near your home for example. This could increase your chances of being accepted for sits in other countries, especially ones that can be more ‘competitive’ due to their popularity.
