Our guide to the top house-sitting platforms for finding London house-sitting jobs.
Out of a house for a short time? Coming to London on holiday? Perhaps you’re off on a trip and want someone to take care of the manor while you’re gone. Whatever your reasons, house-sitting is becoming more and more popular in London.
There are now a bunch of sites dedicated to putting house-sitters together with people who’ve got empty houses that need taking care of. It can be a bit of a nightmare to navigate them all (not to mention a daunting thought to stay in someone else’s house) so we put together a guide of the best and most reliable sites for finding house-sitting jobs.
Oh, and we threw in a couple of top tips for first-timers (you can find those at the bottom). Read on for your way into the London house-sitting market.
Best Places to Find House-Sitting Assignments in London
Trusted Housesitters
Trusted Housesitters is one of the most highly recommended platforms for finding house-sitting jobs in London. Check out their website and it’s no surprise why. The page reads as much like an Airbnb listing as it does a directory.
You’ll find plenty of lovely places just by scrolling through, but you can also change your parameters to include different types of property, location, whether you want to sit for pets or just the house, and so on.
We should add that these guys have some truly lovely houses on their site – Some of them nicer than we’d ever expect to live in unless we strike it big on the lottery.
House Sitters UK
House Sitters UK is another great platform for finding the best house-sitting London has to offer. Their site is a little less intuitive to navigate than some of the others in our guide but so long as you have an iota of online smarts it won’t be an issue.
They offer options for both sides of the house-sitting market – people looking for sitters, and sitters looking for houses. They also have options for cat and dog sitters should you fancy taking care of a four-legged companion on your stay.
There is a monthly joining fee of £29 for sitters but they have an enormous database of houses and pets so you can see it as a worthwhile investment, especially if you consider the price of rent or hotels in London.
Pawshake
Pawshake is a great website that allows local pet and house sitters to advertise themselves in one place. You can’t advertise your houses on the site, and you can’t search for jobs but if you are in London regularly or permanently and looking for these kinds of gigs, having a profile at Pawshake is never a bad idea.
From the name Pawshake you might expect this site to lean more toward the pet-sitting crowd, and it does, but they still have a section dedicated to plain house-sitting if that’s what you’re after.
Mind a Home
Mind a Home offers house and pet-sitting services across the UK with plenty of nice options in London. On top of this, they’ve got an easy-to-navigate site with tons of information and FAQs for anyone who’s just getting started in the house-sitting business.
You can find both sitters and houses to sit. The house sitters have to pay a £15 annual charge for using the service but for people looking to find sitters, the service is free.
There’s also a great function on Mind a Home that allows you to select the property type you want. Fancy posting up in a nice central London flat? You can do just that. Prefer to do your house sitting in a gorgeous townhouse? You can narrow your search that way too.
Yep, of course. Reddit – if you want something from the internet, it can almost invariably be found here. That’s no different for house-sitting jobs either.
The Reddit house-sitting forum is a good place to start. You’ll have to trawl through lots of other information on house-sitting (much of which is worth a read for first-time sitters) but you can find some nice options if you dig about.
You should also try hitting a few keywords into the search bar – just treat it as you would a Google search and you’ll find a few other listings.
Mind My House
Mind My House is another major platform for people looking to find house-sitting jobs or house-sitters. They host ads and listings on a global scale, with plenty of properties on offer in London.
The annual sign-up fee for house-sitters is slightly higher than the others in our guide at US$29 per year, but it can be worth coughing up a bit extra for when you consider the options on offer.
Another major bonus about Mind My House is that they run a 24-hour helpline should anything go wrong with your house-sitting gig. Given that a problem in that field could mean you going without a roof over your head, round-the-clock assistance is something you don’t want to underestimate the importance of.
House Carers
House Carers is a smaller platform and as such doesn’t have so many London listings. We do, however, firmly believe that in pursuit of good houses to sit, no stone should be left unturned, and in that honour we’re going to include it in our guide.
Even if you don’t find any house-sitting opportunities on the site, they do have a great blog all about house-sitting. They’ve covered pretty much every aspect of the service and you can find some really useful information there should you need it.
Practical Tips for House Sitting in London
- Be wary of scams. We’ve purposely only included reliable places to find house-sitting jobs, but this is the internet after all and there are plenty of people looking to take advantage of others. Don’t send any money to people unless you’re sure they’re real and never give out your bank details.
- Some house-sitting jobs will require you to take care of pets too. Be sure that you’re comfortable with any animals you might have to take care of. If you don’t want any pets around, there are options to reflect that in your search.
- Some house-sitting jobs are paid and others aren’t. Obviously the paid work is harder to get and to charge a premium you’ll need lots of provable experience.
- You’re there to look after the house remember. That means you can’t leave it in a tip like you did that Airbnb on last summer’s trip to Ibiza.
