House sitting provides the opportunity to live rent free (or mostly rent free) for periods of days, weeks or months. It allows you to explore new parts of a country or new regions of the world. Some house sit opportunities are just that – living in someone’s house when they are away. They require nothing else from you other than to be there. Some are for several months and others only for days. While other opportunities involve pet sitting, plant sitting, gardening and yard work, etc.

Beyond the basic sitting opportunities there are caretaking jobs. You house share with the owner or have your own private space while performing a job for them. Jobs range from cooking and cleaning to child care to personal driver or assistant. Many of these jobs are long term and harder to do if you do not have appropriate visas. There are a number in the states on organic farms or ranches.

The best sites for house sitting and caretaking are:

Caretaker Gazette
A newsletter is published with opportunities every other month. The newsletter is filled with paid ads – so you know that the opportunities are legitimate. There is also a place to advertise yourself in hopes someone will contact you for an opportunity. The annual fee is not outrageous and the opportunities are plentiful. In between publications there are email blasts with new job offers. My guess would be one third of the post are for house sitters, one third for domestic working caretakers and the remaining third for organic farm workers.

Housecarers.com
This website does not publish the opportunities; they are posted in real time by the home owner themselves. The postings for home owners are free while job seekers must pay to join and gain access to the home owners contact information. There are a decent number of opportunities on the site, while the majority are for Australia and New Zealand. You are able to sort the posts by date available and date modified as well as country or host id. It is a nice system and the majority of all posts are for house, pet and/or plant sits. There are very few (if any) caretaker or farm worker postings. The site recommends having the house sitter pay for some of the utilities or fees – luckily most of the home owners do not ask for this.