I have a sit scheduled for 4 weeks time that I accepted on 02.05.26. Today I asked the home owner for their address so I can start planning my route, activities etc (I’m a planner). I also requested the Welcome Guide. HO mistakenly thought we should be able to see welcome guide when they accepted us, then went on to say they needed to tweek it anyway. I asked could I have the address in the meantime. I’m a bit OCD about my planning and all I knew was it was a village on the outskirts of Worcester. The address was then supplied, with postcode, but it’s a house name, not a number. I asked if there was a number or a photo of the house front so I could locate it on Google Earth. HO asked what was my purpose and they would supply a picture and W3W a few days before the sit.
In all my 20 x 5* sits have I had this type of response, nor a listing without the front of the house shown.
I’m sensing trust issues here and I feel a bit put out. Am I being unreasonable?
Lots of village properties have house names only in the UK. As @Silversitters says, post office finder should help or a google search with the name will get you to the street at least which could be enough. I don’t think they’re being weird and if you asked my folks for example (who live down a rural track in a cottage with a name and no number), they wouldn’t have a clue about W3W or Google Earth. I think they’ve given you what you need. #workaroundit
I am the same. I am not personally familiar with the ‘house name as an address’ concept but have seen that referenced a few times on this forum. The HO’s plan to delay providing the info until a few days before the sit? Is it a trust thing or are they just procrastinators? Hard to say. Are they new and that’s why they mistakenly thought you could already see the Welcome Guide? Out of all you’ve shared, that would irk me the most and I would insist they share the WG within one week from now. That’s plenty of time for them to tweak it. @Maggie8K wisely requests the WG ASAP and advises her sit HOs there will be no travel planning by her until she gets it. She has also cancelled a sit when the WG revealed some previously unrevealed deal breakers. #getthatguide.
We have had similar, just a house name in the UK. They have detailed instructions to get there, and that certainly helped us locate them on Google maps. But you do need that welcome guide. What you agreed to might have changed with those “tweaks”.
risk of surprises between actual pet/property care vs expectations from listing/call
risk that pet parent/property does not exist!
risk that logistics or amenities may be inconvenient
We’ve completed multiple sits with only house name and road name/postcode. Heck, in Schengen area then we’ve sometimes only had GPS coordinates (used for mail delivery!).
From experience, we have learned to be proactive on various topics - including asking for the Welcome Guide on a timely basis. Unless we have specific concerns then we do not require receipt of WG prior to confirming sit.
We recognize that some Pet Parents include personal, private and/or confidential and may be uncomfortable sharing those details well before a sit start date … as housesitter may cancel. What incremental benefit, from housename/postcode, do you expect to obtain from a photo of the house? Strikes us as an odd request.
As a pragmatic suggestion, why don’t you politely ask that the PP forwards the current version of WG (acknowledging that there will be tweaks). Or ask when post-tweak PP is expected to be completed. If you have specific questions related to your planning (travel, transit, supermarkets, facilities, etc) then ask only important ones. Micromanaging PP is unlikely to win you favours.
Unless you have specific concerns re sit - not stated in OP - then we’d encourage taking a deep breath and relaxing. Perhaps a potential takeaway is to ask that property photo be included on listing, or provided to you, prior to confirming the sit.
As we sit in so many different countries and address formats change so much we always ask for a google map pin of the property. This saves lots of headaches. Simply asking for an address shouldn’t get any push back.
After a long drive, to get to the sit, I want to be able to go directly to the house I staying at. If I don’t know what the house looks like and the houses are set back and numbers/house name are not on the gate post then I won’t know which one it is. I have limited mobility and wandering around looking for my home for the next 6 days doesn’t appeal.
Because the WG contains personal data many hosts are reluctant to share it earlier than they feel is necessary, understandably so in my opinion. I get enough information about a sit from the listing, previous reviews and a WhatsApp video chat. If you have the post code then you can plot the route, it’s not going to change much.
Yes this is good advice now that you have also added you have mobility issues and additional security issues for your motorbike. Maybe they’re not aware of this. #askagain
If the host asked what was the purpose, nicely tell them why you asked. You told the forum but not them. Tell them about the parking for the motorcycles. Do they know you have mobility problems? If so tell them it would be easier for you to park close to the house , etc. If they only give you the information a few days before, isn’t this enough time? Maybe they feel you are being pushy and you and their personalities are not aligning. Obviously something rubbed them the wrong way by their snippy answer to you. I would give it a rest till you get closer to the start date.
I’ve never had trouble getting the address or welcome guide well ahead of a sit.
Some hosts will wait till closer to share their security code and/or wifi password, which is dead easy and not a problem, since I won’t be using them till I get there. But if someone won’t share their address (or equivalent so I can identify the home and check the setting and amenities ahead of time), I would immediately cancel.
They might have trust issues, but that doesn’t negate the sitter’s need to know where they’ll be sitting and what will be available to them. And personally, I partner only with hosts who have a mutual understanding of what makes a good sit.
In my case, I sit as a solo woman. As part of what I’d consider common-sense self-care, I would never agree to a location that would remain a mystery till too late, having booked travel and all. To me, my safety and comfort are at least as important as the hosts’. And again, I’ve never had any hosts have an issue with sharing such info ahead of time.
Hi Kari, I know how you feel. A very recent sit I did, and it was ages before given the address, which was only a house name and village name and postcode. The road was un-named. I was eventually given directions but didn’t help as sat nav brought me a different way, up an extremely narrow single track road, although another way was only a little better, as a few passing places. When you only have a house name and village, it is a little like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Definitely not easy. I have had a couple of difficult ones now, where just a house name. Isn’t always easy, especially if you should have traffic behind and attempting to read house names etc. Do make sure they give you detailed directions, and you have a phone number to call, if you end up lost.
@Kari it is completely reasonable to expect to know precisely where you will be sitting. And you shouldn’t feel you have to justify the need to have full information about the sit and the location. Personally, I won’t make any travel plans until I have an address. I think it’s unreasonable for anyone to expect a sitter to purchase flights, trains, etc without knowing exactly where we will be staying. It’s not just about getting there. I also need to check how far it is to a grocery stores, other shops or other places I might want to go to during the sit. This is especially important if I am traveling using public transit, sometimes places that don’t seem far may in fact take a long time to get to if multiple buses or trains are required.
I’ve never had anyone refuse to provide me with an address once the sit is confirmed. I’ve had a few times where they were updating the welcome guide and planning to send in in a week or so. I asked that they go ahead and send me the address and they did so immediately.
I’ve only had one time where I did a sit that just had a house name (in the UK). Prior to that I didn’t know that was a thing. However, the HO provided the house name, street, and postcode, along with a photo of the front of house in the welcome guide. I didn’t even need to ask.
Ask for the info you need to prepare for the sit and don’t feel like you are being unreasonable or that you should have to justify asking.
They have given you their address! I am really surprised by some of the responses you’ve had from others on here. I think you are reading waaaay too much into it.
We’ve sat a lot in UK villages that just supply a house name and postcode. You can easily find out what their house looks like online… if you’re proactive for just 1 minute.
It’s very easy to locate them with the details you already have without any extra details. So I think perhaps by asking for more has maybe lead to her strange response, because it would only have taken you an extra 1 min worth of googling to find their house, so she’s probably never been asked for an image. You’ve already got all the essential details you need.
But yes you are right, a photo would have helped.
You’ve got the house name, so that’s more than enough to find it, you don’t need anything else. There’s two sites we use and we have found 100% of UK village sits this way, namely 1. google maps or 2. rightmove sold prices.
If the house name doesn’t show on google maps, all you do is go to the postcode on google maps and go on streetview and wander along the road to find their house name on streetview. If the bins are out on the day the google maps image was taken, it’s even faster because it could also be written on a bin outside their home too.
If you can’t find it on google maps, then:
Rightmove Sold Prices - it must be the sold prices page of their website, not properties up for sale/rent. If homes officially have a house name. Just search for the postcode, and look for their house name.
Their are other sold house price websites if this doesn’t work, but we’ve always managed to find every address this way so far.
Given it’s a village, the postcode is probably quite a small street.
I don’t think they had trust issues, I think you unknowingly created a weird situation. They actually did give you their address, so please don’t view them differently.
You can get almost all information you need to plan a journey from a UK post code, roads, public transport and trains. It’s much more precise and granular than a zip code, or similar codes used in many European countries. The sitter knows the village and that would make it trivial to glean details on grocery stores, pubs, post offices, garages, GP surgeries, libraries and more.
The OP states that they are a little OCD and this is feeding their anxiety. I’m sure that it would be possible to find photos of the house using the house name and postcode. There are websites for selling and buying property that will show when the property was last sold amd for how much, often with photos. There’s also upmystreet.org a website with a wide range of demographic information, including crime rates.
A listing in the US might be an entirely different proposition, where a zip code might cover a vast area. Context and country are important factors.