Vacation Rentals Community

Dear vacation rental property owners, If you have read this far, please indulge me! We would very much like to reach out to the world’s vacation rental property owners to tell them about our fabulous free online house sitting matching service. Thing is, after three years online, we are only starting to market ourselves now, so please take a minute to tell us whether ours is a service you think you may need or would consider using. Do you ever find yourselves in need of a property caretaker for your empty vacation rental properties during the off-season? We have 7000 house sitters registered with our service who are very keen to mind your vacation rental property when and where you need them. Our house sitters are very resourceful and reliable folk who are seeking house sitting assignments worldwide as a way to see new places and meet new people! Most of our house sitter members don’t charge for their house sitting services and are prepared to meet their own costs during their stay in your property. Sound good? Our house sitters expect to have to perform any number of negotiable duties to keep your property in tip top condition during their stay. They have your needs in mind! Once you have taken out a free home owner membership with us, you could be searching one or both of our house sitter databases and making contact with potential house sitters in minutes. As you know, insurance premiums for empty properties quickly become sky-high after a vacancy of 30 days. Having a house sitter in your property is a great way to prevent this from happening! We think our free service for home owners is the best there is, but don’t take our word for it! Visit our Testimonials page to get all the details from our happy members on how they found success through our site: http://www.mindmyhouse.co.nz/advice/testimonials.php For a one-stop-shop on what our free service has to offer you please see the following page in our Advice Centre: http://www.mindmyhouse.co.nz/advice/advice_home_owners.php I do look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions about when, where and why you would (or wouldn’t) consider using a service such as ours to meet your house sitting needs. Thanks must go to John Romano for creating this fabulous resource for vacation rental property owners worldwide (and those of us who want to tell you about our services). Cheers! Susan Holtham

Susan, thank you for the compliment and even more for sharing your wonderful website with all our members and guests.  Do you have house sitters that would be willing to temporarily move out (may be rent a motel) if the home owner has an oppurtunity to rent his/her home for let's say a week (vacation rental)? This would be a magnificent option for vacation home owners.  Do you give suggestions to vacation home owners on how to screen or do background checks on house sitters?

Dear John, Our house sitters are very flexible about moving in, out of and in between house sitting assignments as and when their services are required. The key to success using a service such as mine is maintaining honest and effective lines of communication with your prospective house sitters. A vacation rental owner’s sitter wanted listing on MindMyHouse.com could include a paragraph along the following lines: “We need you to stay from 5 January 2009 to 1 March (or thereabouts) then again for two weeks in April. We are looking for a person or couple who can come and house sit when we need them. This property is a vacation rental and thus may be required with as little as 48 hours notice. If you can move out of our place this quickly and then wouldn’t mind coming back again, please get in touch!” Regarding your second question: with all of the free online house sitting matching services such as ours, the onus is on home owners to screen their potential house sitters during the application process. We ask home owners what kind of person they would be comfortable handing the keys to their home to. Many of our house sitters are prepared to offer varied forms of reassurance that they are responsible people who can be trusted to care for your animals and property. It may give you peace of mind to search for house sitters who have commissioned a police check on themselves, who have references and/or referees, who are willing to provide you with a security deposit and happy to negotiate and sign a written house sitting agreement spelling out both party's expectations of the house sitting assignment. I can tell you that in three years of operation, I have never had a complaint from a home owner member about the lack of honesty of any of our house sitter members. Finally, here’s a testimonial from one of our home owner members who runs a retreat in Costa Rica. “Can I tell you that I will tell the world about your service. With only 2 weeks to our trip, we thought our animals were in jeopardy of being kennelized, when we were referred to you. We have never opened our home to strangers and were reluctant. Desperation prompted our use of the service but oh my Gosh! We not only had tons of qualified responses, our house-sitters ended up being so amazing and perfect. I told Ed, our house-sitter I wanted to marry him and replace my husband, since he is handier around the house. I believe the sitters had a great time "the most relaxing 3 weeks ever" and we had peace of mind. Thank you... I will be writing a blog about your service with my business www.retreatscostarica.com” Rosemary Rein, Costa Rica. Oct 2007 Any more questions about our service, please don't hesitate to ask! ; j. Cheers, Susan Holtham

Thank you for the detailed explanations.  I think you provide indeed a very valuable service for vacation home owners.  I will certainly visit your site next time I am in need of house/pet sitters for my vacation homes!  

Hi Susan,

 I have read through your very useful community section of your page and have noticed that you have added a WYSISWYG edting and formatting tool to help your users create even nicer listings.    I recommend you replace it with the editing and formatting tool offered by http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ as it is also compatible with Safari.  To see how it works visit http://www.vrwd.com/add.php