Hi, I'm Lorna Li,
host of Entrepreneurs for a Change,
and this video series explores lifestyle business travel. Now, today I'm
gonna look at the pros and cons of house-sitting as a way to travel
and do business in the short and long term. One of the services that
came across my radar is trustedhousesitters.com. There's a couple that I met in Chiang Mai,
who used trustedhousesitters.com to travel throughout Europe, and they both
are involved in Internet business; they have a drop-ship e-commerce store,
and the guy is a programmer. So it was really exciting to discover the world
of house-sitting as a way to stretch out long-term travel and also be able to
create an environment, or have an environment where you can work from home.
There's pros and cons to using house-sitting services -
trustedhousesitters.com being just one of a few. Some of the pros are, you
can radically reduce the cost of accommodation;
it's great because you don't have to pay hotel costs in the
different locales that you're in. Chances are if you are a house-sitter, you will be exchanging your house-sitting services
for free - or radically reduced - accommodation, depending on of course, the
locale that you're in, and basically how hot the housing market might be.
Another benefit of using house-sitting services is that you can drastically
reduce the cost of your food. So, if you are staying in a hostel
breakfast or some kind of hotel, even a business travellers hotel,
chances are you won't have access to a full kitchen, which means that you're gonna be
eating out a lot, and that's gonna increase your cost of food. So if you are
a house-sitter, you'll have access to the fridge, the stove, the oven - all
of the wonderful amenities of being at home. And so therefore, you could go
to the supermarket or the organic farmers market and just make your own food,
which is much healthier and much more economic.
Another benefit of being a house-sitter is you will have access to
dedicated Internet, and have a location where you can work for
long stretches of time in a quiet location. So your office is no longer
that really busy WiFi cafe with cappuccino machines blasting in the background; you can basically work
from the comfort of your home-away-from-home, have client calls, and just a
lot of peace and quiet, which is a lot more supportive of concentration and
creativity.
Another benefit of using house-sitting services is that you can actually
travel for long periods of time, especially if you are a big fan of slow
travel. Depending on the house-sitting assignment,
some of these assignments are for a week or two,
or even just a weekend, but some of these assignments can really stretch out for months, even a year or two. And this is
especially the case for vacation homes as well, where the homeowner might not
want to be in Costa Rica all year round, but they want someone they can trust
present in the house, taking care of things, taking care of the gardens,
maybe there's pets as well that need to be fed. So house-sitting is a great
way to do slow travel if that's the kind of person you are. And then another
benefit of house-sitting is that you might have the wonderful
companionship of a pet... or more.
Some disadvantages of house-sitting include
the limited flexibility around the location and the travel dates. So, really the house-sitting assignments
are up to the hosts' schedule, and so you're gonna have to fit in and figure
out how you're gonna get to the locale, and how to make the dates work for
you as well. In some cases you might actually need a car if the house in
question is in the countryside, for example.
Another disadvantage of using house-sitting services as a way to accommodate
long-term travel is the fact that there is some work involved. It might
involve everything from gardening, feeding the pet - which could be fun and
cool - but you may need to know how to deal with the fuse box, or if
something happens with the pipes; are you gonna have to fix it? So it's
important for you to determine what the responsibilities are, and whether
you're up to these responsibilities.
Another disadvantage is the likelihood that there is gonna be some cost to
you. If you're house-sitting in a really popular location like the San
Francisco Bay area, some of these house-sitting jobs actually
have rent. It might be radically reduced rent from local market prices
but still, you're paying a big chunk of money for monthly rent.
Or some of the home owners might want you to pay for utilities as well, which is totally reasonable.
So, it's up to you to really look at the details of the house-sitting
assignment, and decide whether or not it's a fit. One thing that you're gonna
have to do, which will improve your chances of getting assignments, is to get
a police report, or a police background check done to send as a supporting
document to the homeowners when you apply for a house-sitting assignment.
So, that's it for today. These were the major pros and cons of house-sitting
as a way to power a long-term lifestyle business travel. For more travel
tips, please visit us again at entrepreneursforachange.com. And, I'll see you
in the next episode. 'Bye.