There’s a right way and a wrong way to select a house sitter. Picking a house sitter can be rather confusing the first time around, especially because there’s a lot of emotion involved in leaving your home in a stranger’s hands. Fortunately Mindahome has simplified the process and made it much easier to find good house sitting talent.
The first step is to register with Mindahome. You’ll be asked to provide basic information about yourself, your home and your house sitting requirements. For home owners, registering won’t cost you anything.
As soon as you have an account, you can browse through our pool of house sitting applicants and single out the ones most likely to match your requirements. Once your home is registered, interested potential house sitters can also send you their applications.
Applicants for house sitting jobs are required to provide profiles. Finding a house sitter the right way involves going over the profiles of candidates meticulously and picking out the ones who seem to “fit the bill” when it comes to your requirements. This means looking at more than just gender, age or educational background. It involves looking at past house sitting experience, related skills like animal care and home maintenance, common sense and dependability and other factors that will help you decide whether you really want to leave your home in this person’s care.
After filtering out the most likely candidates based on their profiles, you need to interview the ones you’ve picked out. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview to gain an impression of a person. But, when it’s not possible, arrange a video chat or phone interview to give you a “feeling” about the person you want to engage. Rank the interviewees according to their skills, attitudes and personalities then make your choice.
Once you’ve made your choice, discuss your requirements in depth. These discussions can turn you into friends and you will have achieved a level of assurance that is so important in a house sitting arrangement. Make sure you cover all the nitty gritty of the house sitting arrangement. This can cover all areas from rooms to be left untouched to the phone number of your cat’s vet. It’s wise to list your requirements and expectations in a contract which both parties can sign.
Strange as it may feel for first-timers, house sitting is now a well-established practice, especially where urban sprawl and job mobility are breaking up traditional neighbourhoods. The secret to selecting the right house sitter is to sign up with the right provider and making time to choose the house sitter wisely.