I did this and it was terrible. Lost a ton of money. Without going into all the details, to make it on the dates I had committed, I spent a crazy stupid amount on flights. Basically, I already saw here that if I went at a more normal time or waited for a better deal (there was a price surge in July) I could fly there and rent myself a nice place with what I was spending on the ticket. (Yes, I feel dumb about not backing out at that point, but I tend to have a hard time of backing out of commitments.)

Then once I got to the region (I went early and traveled a bit, so I wasn’t yet in the housesitting city), I met someone renting out a cute cheap place… that I couldn’t rent because of my commitment as a housesitter… so instead of settling down there
I spent more to get to the housesitting city, pay for a hotel the night before and so on.

Again, I saw that it would have been cheaper to do my own thing. Fly when it’s affordable, be able to be in the flow and rent a place when I find one instead of paying more to move along…

Then when I get to the sit the place was filthy, so I left after two days. More costs associated with that. And because I didn’t want conflict and I didn’t want to be stuck in a gross place, I offered to pay for their housesitter to replace me. They accepted, but still left me a bad review which means that even if I wanted to get new sits I wouldn’t be able to.

The whole system is highly exploitative of sitters who often find themselves in unacceptable places and end up putting up with it and becoming a housecleaner on top of petsitter because they’re terrified of a bad review and in many cases, are depending on housesitting to not be homeless.

And if you were to first tell them your origin (or ethnicity) they’d start lecturing you on how you’re actually just American and you should just say that you’re American.