Hello everyone. Can homeowners in other countries see my requests?
We are based in the USA. However, we would like to begin sitting in Europe. We have applied for two sits and have received no responses; even with two additional requests for the homeowners to respond to us. Am I missing something on the website which would expand my scope of potential sits?
In my experience, there’s a high proportion of HOs who never bother to answer and quite a few that take too long to read applications. You can see if your application has been read or not but this works better on the website than on the app.
Keep applying to as many sits as you find appealing, you can always withdraw.
How long has it been since you applied and followed up? Your location doesn’t impact visibility in any way when you apply for a sit so it’s like that, depending on the timeline, you just got unlucky with 2 rude homeowners.
Everyone should be able to see your applications. You can see the status whether it is Read by the host by your application. Some members are not great at communicating.
Those hosts are just ignoring you, might reply late or haven’t read your msgs yet.
Thank you for your quick response. The first sit we applied for, I simply chalked it up to a deadbeat HO. But after it happened again with the second HO, I began to wonder if it was us. Their loss! We are excellent sitters. If they are irresponsible in their response, I don’t want to enter into a sit with them. Thank you!
My messages haven’t even been read. I’m withdrawing. Too irresponsible for my tastes. Thank you!
You are right. I don’t want to partner with someone who is not fluent in their communication or who doesn’t see sitting as a mutual agreement and therefore sees no need to answer messages.
Have you got any reviews? Often hosts abroad won’t take chances on a newbie sitter. That’s because they worry not only about your ability to sit well, they might’ve been burned before or worry about an overseas sitter not showing up. The more strong reviews you have, the better your odds. Most folks start domestically.
We have been on 7 sits, all five star reviews. I withdrew my offer to sit.
It depends on how far in the future this is. If it is several months ahead, I don’t mind when the HO take their time. This is not necessarily irresponsible (but some will never respond…).
I just keep applying to other sits that I might want to do.
I do most of my sits in Europe and I don’t hear from many right away. After a few negative experiences in the past, I only apply for prime sits now. The applications for those fill within minutes. Many new hosts have told me how surprised they were that their applications filled so quickly and explained later that they needed time to review. I don’t have any problem with that. If I hear, I hear. Nothing stops me from applying to others and if I want to do those sits, I do.
Sometimes, I’ve waited weeks without hearing. Has it been worth it? Absolutely. My husband and I had an amazing sit over the holidays last year in a beautiful apartment in one of the most desirable places in the world. They were incredibly welcoming, the apartment was beautiful and very clean, there was a weekly cleaner who came in. It could not have been better. I had another one this year. I waited quite awhile to hear, did a video call where they asked for more time, which I was absolutely fine with. I was their first sitter, they were being careful. A short time later, they offered me the sit. It was spectacular. The very best of what THS is.
I totally understand why many sitters don’t want to wait. Many travel full time and need to know soon so they can plan ahead. I sit as a hobby, and it costs me a fair bit to do so. I can be selective and since I have been, it’s been great. It depends on your circumstances. I don’t agree that a host can’t be counted on to be a good partner in this process if you don’t hear from them right away. It hasn’t been my experience anyway.
As always, Maggie8K has practical words here.
When we started in this system as HO we would not consider anyone more than a few hours from our home - it seemed too dicey. However, we did answer all applicants (and that was before 5-&-done so we had tons to answer!)
As international Sitters we have found many HO are not comfortable relying on a Sitter who is responding from another country. Our Sits in Europe are generally booked after we arrived in Europe and in the same/similar time zone.
It happens - but I woudn’t assume you will get an international Sit before you go abroad.
The FIRST European sit we got was (a) somewhat remote so absolutely had to have a rental car (b) a menagerie of outdoor animals.
It worked out fine: home was lovely and in a very intersting place, outdoor animals were easy to care for: just saying you may need to start by looking at ones you may not yet be considering.
Regarding people thinking the distance is too much, bear in mind that you can change your location on the site. I regularly change mine when I’m searching in a specific area to make people less concerned about me traveling. In this case if I wanted to secure summer sits in Europe, I’d change to somewhere in Europe. I will then in my application say something along the lines of “I’m currently in x but I’m going to be near y (where y is their location) in z month (where z is in advance of their sit date so it appears that I’m going there with or without them).” or “I’m currently in x, but I have to be in y during z month and I believe your sit in w would be a great stop en-route.” if I have something specific already planned.
I’m a full-time nomad with no home and, frankly, generally have 0 idea where I will be months from now until something happens to take me somewhere specific. So Y and Z could very much change from application to application as I won’t actually have anything planned (unless I really do have something bringing me to that area), but they’re true in spirit as I’ll be happy to go there if I have a reason to do so.
Thank you this perspective. It is very helpful.
