I’ve used TH at least a dozen times before with good results. With fairly easy pets and a supremely desirable location in Washington DC, I have always been flooded with applicants in the first hour. This time - nothing. zero. nada. no responses at all. Any ideas?
Maybe THS recruited relatively too many homeowners?
There are more HOs saying that (there is another thread by an HO in Denver now).
There are many D.C. area sits coming up all the time.
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Wow - I just did a search and found out less than 25% of listings for Washington DC are actually IN Washington DC. There are listings for Rockville, Gaithersburg, Baltimore MD. Vienna, Fredrick VA etc. Suburbs 20-40 minutes outside the city. Stupidly confusing to potential housesitters
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That’s pretty typical of searches.
I’m a sitter, most sitters are like us, whereby they would first search for Washington DC, which shows 145 sits as it includes the surrounding area, but then we scroll into the map, which then shows 44. It sounds like you didn’t do the second part.
If you pop your profile link to your post, people can help to see if there’s any reasons behind why you haven’t received any applicants. Because it’s amazing how many people post to say they have no applicants, and haven’t realised that a little tweak of their profile would work wonders.
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Yes, it’s a problem wherever you search, bringing places up miles from the required area. It’s time THS addressed this issue
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I did a search for Winchester @Smiley and it gave me 561 when there were actually only 28! 
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You might find it helpful to post your link to receive feedback on your listing. I know you say you’ve used THS many times but maybe, in light of no responses, it would be an idea to do a refresh to make it (even more) desirable?
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I’ll link it (when I figure out how) and always welcome “tweaks” but as I said, for several years and over a dozen sitters I have always received dozens of inquiries in the first couple of hours.
I also know, from renting out a ST rental apartment for 20 years, (before vrbo and airbnb!) that many people don’t think to do a map seach. I think TH sitters in general are fairly savvy, but any impediment degrades the whole experience.
The map function is only as accurate as the Owner’s placement of their home. Someone who lives 40 minutes outside the city can state “Washington, DC” as their closest city, and the pin on the map will be there.
It is best to search “Washington, DC” and then filter by DISTANCE to see which listings are closest.
It is the system’s placement. As I understand it, all that the owner can do is to select the name of the town they are in.
Many are reluctant to write the name of a town that nobody heard of. Or they may not be aware of the choices in the system. Some choose the right name but then the system sets the pin in a different town with the same name in some other state or province.
There are also the HOs that moved to a new place and never updated their location.
However, some Owners are purposely deceptive. I have definitely seen many cases.
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I am originally from Washington, DC. I agree with the suggestions above. Make sure you clearly identify. You are located in the metropolitan Washington, DC area.
We currently live in a small city outside of Orlando, but I advertise that downtown Orlando is less than 10 minutes from our home. That helps to attract people looking to visit Orlando and the Disney surrounding areas.
This is an interesting topic. I believe a homeowner should always post the name of their town/city as it makes for less confusion. With Google Maps, its easy to find its location to the rest of the region. However, this can take time and with the 5 applicant max rule, a sitter could miss out on a great sit. (Yet again another good reason to cancel that unpopular 5 applicant rule!)
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Cannot people really not stop complaining about that limit? These HOs had no applicants… 
Anyway, time to look at the map etc has no limit. Just open the application window and have a cup of coffee.
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You might want to share your listing in your profile, so folks here can offer feedback. While you were able to get applicants previously, that’s not working now. You might have to up your game to compete effectively for sitters, especially good ones. Now, there seem to be way more sits than sitters.
Hi @victoriamck I have gone ahead and linked your profile for you.
Hey, @victoriamck! There’s nothing really wrong with your listing, but given that people are seeming to have a harder time getting applicants these days, here are a few things. (As an aside, you’ve been doing this for a while, so maybe you haven’t updated the listing in a while so don’t realize how many new things you can flag for people.)
- You don’t have any amenities listed except WiFi. Some people, for instance, care whether you have a TV, microwave, air conditioning.
- If I were coming in – and in general this is a sit I’d like to do someday as my daughter lives in DuPont and I’m always looking for DC sits – I’d love to know what options I’d have for my car, as I’d be driving in.
- Your photos could be better. Again, they aren’t bad, and I’d have thought for a sit in the DC metro area they were sufficient. But since you’re not attracting applicants this time: they’re just not great. I replaced most of my photos recently because my new phone takes much better photos, and I think it looks way better. (You can see my listing if you click on my name.) There’s no photo of the bathroom – that’s a red flag for some sitters right off the bat – and the photo of the kitchen doesn’t tell me much about how happy I’d be preparing food there. Clean/declutter until you get to exactly how you’d leave the spaces for the sitter, put some lamps on, and take your photos an hour after dawn or an hour before dusk.
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I am having the same problem. I used to get tons of applicants within hours of posting a date. I had a trip cancelled by a sitter due to a family emergency and I reposted and got nothing. I thought it was because it was too recent so changed the trip dates, still nothing. I added a new trip 4 days ago, for a trip in Sept. and received ONLY ONE application! That was unheard of a few month ago. If this keeps up, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And, we have almost 200 sitters who have saved our listing, probably because we live on a lake! So I know folks like our set up.