Need Housesitters and Petsitters?
Many home and petowners find they need housesitters and petsitters for when they travel away from home.
There is a need for a house-sitting and pet sitting resource that offers an international network of housesitters and homeowners with insider knowledge of house-sitting, home and pet care.
How you benefit from HouseSit Match and the housesitters network
House-sitting is a growing global trend in a world where disposable incomes are not what they once were. We are all finding the need to be more frugal, cutting back where we can. House-sitting offers real benefits.
Housesitters can:
- take a holiday without costly accommodation
- live like a local – have a more authentic holiday experience
- alleviate the burden of paying rent while building a new house
- indulge a love of animals
- familiarise yourself with a new area you are considering moving to
- time out while recovering from a relationship break-up
- house-sit just to save money
Homeowners can rest assured their property will be cared for:
- home kept secure in your absence
- property and garden lovingly-tended
- beloved pets relax in their own home
- pool maintained and kept clean
- you save money by not having to pay kennelling fees
A Reliable Housesitters Resource
Leaving the house in the care of unknown housesitters is something that can make one nervous and should not be taken lightly. That’s where HouseSit Match comes in; we offer members a range of guidelines and legally approved template contracts and documents to enable a smooth process.
Scalable Options
We recognise that everyone has different needs and budgets, so we offer two levels of service:
HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT – MY STORY
The way I came to house-sitting is a tale that spans several continents, sees me lapping up the waves of the French Riviera, enjoying the poppy kissed fields of Tuscany and pet-sitting in the urban landscapes of London, Paris and Florence amongst other places. But it actually started in a military coup in Africa.
Travelling and adventure are in my blood. I was only young when I went on my first long journey. It would be the biggest and most important journey of my life.
It brought my family from Sudan to England and changed the course of our lives. This saved us from the worst of the fall out that occurred after the military coup in Khartoum in 1969. That’s when Colonel Nimiery overtook the government to establish a new rule. He began by nationalising all the businesses he could. In the wake of the May Revolution my parents lost their home and their livelihood.
We were remarkably fortunate, however, in that we were able move to London just after this crisis. My father was offered work in the UK.
Life in London
So as a child I was thrown into a new life in London which could not have been more different from the life we had left behind. We were very thankful for the safer environment and the greater national stability, but naturally we missed the sunshine, and ready ripe Mediterranean vegetables. The curious collection of odourless grey, cellophane-wrapped foods offered in supermarkets on London’s Edgware Road at the time were hard to recognise.
Living in London in the 1970’s would bring other new experiences. For example, we had the three-day week with no electricity or transport and 24-hour rain in August! However, one of my abiding memories from those early days was my parents’ amazed reactions to the iconic hippies protesting at anything they could. The long hair, tie-dyed clothes and Afghan coats parading with placards up and down the West End was a big culture shock after their conservative Arab upbringing. Pretty soon they settled into a British way of life, they cooked with grey vegetables, they worshiped the BBC, bought umbrellas for everyone and we moved to the outer suburbs.
And housesitting.?
What does all this have to do with house-sitting and running a housesitters network? Well may you ask – suffice it to say it set me on a course that meant that I embrace and enjoy travel, my early life sowed the seeds for my search for affordable travel as a student, then later as a homeowner and a house-sitter myself.
Also from a young age I nurtured a desire to see more of the world. This was inevitably fuelled by my family’s wanderlust and together we would explore Britain and Europe; sometimes renting sometimes house-sitting for friends of my parents while they were also off exploring. France and Italy became regular and beloved destinations. These short adventures stayed with me and continued to shape the person I was to become.
A love of travel
Even as a penniless student I was not detracted from my love of travel and I would take advantage of the newly formed budget airlines to travel as much as I could, to the US and Canada as an overseas student and as an au pair-the further the better.
My early career working with international companies helped me to develop my own professional network, both across the UK and overseas. I was soon able to share my passion with my family as we took up house-sits and swaps in some new and some more familiar cities.
House-sit Lightening bolt
Sometimes ideas take time to form and at other times they hit you a bit like a lightning bolt. The formation of the idea that would go on to become HouseSit Match was definitely one of the latter type. The bolt came after a discussion with a friend who told me she had managed to save $50K Australian Dollars by living rent free by house sitting during one year. If it could work for one person’s rent, surely it could work for holiday rentals and travel accommodation as well. And for pet owners it could save money by being an alternative to kennels. By connecting groups of like-minded people there was no end to what we could achieve. We worked together to launch in the UK and Australia using our existing connections and building organically as news spread amongst our friends, and our friends’ friends until we were live across Europe, Australasia and the Caribbean.
Now we provide an easy to use secure online service for those willing to share and collaborate in order to experience a great deal of the world and all that it has to offer. We are responsive and will try to get to your questions as quickly as we can within a 24-hour period (to cover for global timezones). Make a note of our contact details, follow us on social media and most importantly join our network.
Our future is bright because of the many wonderful people in our interactive house sitting and pet sitting network whom we enable to achieve their dreams of affordable travel through affordable home and pet care.
Lamia Walker
Founder – HouseSit Match