Hi everyone,
I’m hoping someone from THS or maybe other members can clarify something for me.
I was on a legacy/basic account and upgraded to Standard specifically because of the advertised instant notifications feature. With the legacy account, I already had notifications but they were never instant. So my entire reason for upgrading was to avoid constantly refreshing the listings so I wouldn’t miss opportunities.
However, since upgrading, I’ve found that the notifications are nowhere near instant. I’ve been manually checking the site and repeatedly see new sits appear, yet the email and push notifications only reach me 20 minutes to an hour later, sometimes even longer. Not once have I received a truly “instant” notification. It’s basically the same delayed notification system I already had and completely useless for competitive cities where sits reach the max 5 applicants in just a couple of minutes.
After noticing this, I searched the forum and found older threads where other members had already raised this issue. I wish I had seen those before upgrading. But what concerns me more is that THS has been silent about this for a long time, yet continues to send marketing emails urging members to upgrade specifically so they “don’t miss a sit” thanks to, quoting directly, “instant alerts for unlimited saved searches.” This is being promoted despite the feature clearly not being instant by any reasonable definition.
This feels misleading, possibly even false advertising, and honestly quite frustrating.
Is there any plan to actually make notifications real-time? And why is this still being promoted as a feature if it doesn’t work as advertised?
Same like how they used to show potential users well populated maps for available sits. But then once you registered you noticed that they were showing you a user map, not actually a map of currently available sits. They may have fixed this. But that was very misleading.
I always pointed this out to any people interested as I also fell for it. There are regions where there are barely any listing, but they made it seem as there is constant offer.
@Meds75, to our knowledge then there is no published timestamp on listings so it is not possible to quantify time passage between posting and notification. Not aware of any related THS policy or service standard. It is our suspicion that such notifications are periodic rather than instant - such as hourly. Popular listings quickly secure five applications.
There are no timestamps, but you can notice this, if you happen to run manual searches beside having notifications set up. I sometimes do this in cities with few hosts and many people wanting to visit as those are gone within minutes from being posted.
So my estimate would be around 20 min too, for the first push notifications on the app to go through after I see a new post in a manual search.
You will get a notification for your favorited listings first.
I have also noticed that when I have several searches set up for the city, the region, different filters and there are listings that will match several of the searches they will trigger notifications with different delays that will be sent within a couple of minutes of the first notification for your favorited sits.
Thanks to the members who confirmed they’re having the same experience. It’s helpful (and disappointing) to see that the delays are consistent and not just an isolated issue on my end.
From a technical perspective, implementing real-time or near–real-time notifications is absolutely feasible. As a developer, I can say this is not a complex or unsolved problem. If notifications are delayed by 20–60 minutes, that’s almost certainly a deliberate product or management decision rather than a technical limitation.
To be clear, I could respect that decision if it were communicated transparently. What’s frustrating is that, knowing this, the feature continues to be marketed as “instant alerts” and used as a key incentive to upgrade, when in practice they are demonstrably not instant by any reasonable definition.
That dishonesty between how the feature is promoted and how it actually behaves is the core issue here.
Let’s take an example. A member is watching a specific listing in Zurich (marked as a Favorite on October 1, 2025). They also have two saved searches: one for Zurich (saved search #1, created July 1, 2025) and one for all of Switzerland (saved search #2, created February 1, 2025).
On December 14, 2025, the Favorited listing posts new dates.
Based on my experience, the notifications arrive in this order:
Favorite notification — always comes first.
Oldest matching saved search — in this case, saved search #2 (Switzerland).
Newer matching saved searches — next comes saved search #1 (Zurich).
If there are additional saved searches that also match, I receive even more notifications for the same listing.
I think it’s fair that the oldest saved search gets notified first, and it also makes sense that someone who took the time to mark a specific listing as a favorite is notified before others.
That said, I don’t find it useful to receive multiple notifications for the same housesit through several saved searches with overlapping areas. In my view, this is unnecessary and a waste of resources.
In light of the recent discussions about the platform’s sustainability, I believe that optimizing the platform—including long-awaited improvements—would benefit THS financially more than trying to extract additional revenue from its members.
I recognize that the biggest load on the platform comes from individual listings (transactions) and the operations they trigger: applications, messaging, notifications, and so on. I can also understand the argument that linking platform financing to these activities may feel fairer than relying on annual memberships.
That said, in the context of this discussion, I strongly believe that optimizing operational costs should come before any increase in membership fees or the introduction of booking fees. And many of us feel there’s still a lot of room for improvement, yet our money doesn’t seem to be going toward those areas.
I had read that, but I thought it was ment for basic members. Oh well, I should not be surprised when THS “bends the truth”.
I can easily see that the notifications are not instant. I have two set for the same city. They appear ten minutes apart.
Often I follow my notification just to find nothing new. I don’t know if hosts can push their ads, so that they show on top again and send a new notification?
What I am most annoyed with is that I am making full use of the “unlimited”. Currently I have about 25 searches. But. I tap a notification, let’s say “France”. It opens that search. I tap another notification, let’s say “Italy”. It changes the heading from France to Italy, but the results are still the France ones. I think this is because I have so many saved searches - but what am I paying the higher price for, if not for working unlimited searches!
Yes, we did some experiments, with Sheila as a homeowner posting a few test sits at a certain time. It is not instant, it took at least 7 or 8 minutes.
It is probably faster to have a script on your computer automatically searching for sits in the areas that you are interested in.
Also the number of searches is not umlimited as was promised. The maximum was 50, I believe.
This used to be the view before you signed up if I remember well. This was like two years ago or so. It doesn’t work the same anymore, you need register first to see the map. But I remember checking the page before I joining and they gave you a number of listings in a region or city on the map. And it looked like there is a lot of offer. But then the number of active listing once I registered was far lower.
This is how I remember it at least. It stuck with me because it wasn’t easy to get a first review with that few listings in my part of the world.
