Housesitting as a Way of Life

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Whether you're housesitting for temporary shelter or as an alternative to home ownership, minimize your belongings to make moving easier. DIANE AZEVEDO

Although the history of house sitting has yet to be written, it's reasonable to assume that the practice has been going on so long that it was probably originally called "cavesitting". Still, the idea of earning shelter by caring for a house while its owners are away on leave or extended vacation may be as new to you as it was to my wife and me when we first stumbled on this constructive answer to our own housing problem.

Our incentive to enter the home minding business came a few years ago, when Diane and I were looking for a way to save enough money so that we could eventually buy our own place in the country. However, with me tied to a low paying university C.O. job and Diane who couldn't get a teaching position clerking at a small store, we were already living close to the cuff. So close that stranded as we were in a college town with its built-in minimum wages and maximum prices, saving any money at all after our day-to-day bills were paid seemed out of the question.

The solution: Cut out one major expense — rent — entirely by moving out of our apartment and into a house that would cost us nothing, so long as we maintained the building and its grounds. (This was really great for us because the arrangement had the added advantage of giving Diane and me an education in gardening and home upkeep before we bought our homestead.)

Please don't think, though, that the benefit was all on our side. Housesitting is no rip-off, but a service that's of equally mutual use to the owner, whose residence is looked after in the manner to which it's accustomed, and the caretaker, who receives low-cost (or no-cost) shelter.

The gains to both parties are more than material, too, because substituting a service for cash rent transforms the notoriously difficult landlord tenant relationship — with its deception, fraud and begrudged upkeep — into one of trust and cooperation.

From the landlord's point of view, you know, the trouble with leasing his property is that he relinquishes his rights to it for the duration of the contract with little guarantee that the house or apartment will still be in one piece when he gets it back. (Frequently, the rental income doesn't even compensate the owner for the wear and tear on the building — a fact which discourages him from making repairs or improvements.)

The tenant, meanwhile, pays a high price for the privilege of calling four walls "home," and, especially if he's treated badly, all too often thinks of his rent payments as a license to mess up the property.

Housesitting, by contrast, not only begins with mutual goodwill but offers a built-in system of checks and balances that ensure decent behavior on both sides, even if the initial friendliness breaks down. Obviously, the owner — whose object is to obtain tender, loving care for his dwelling — can't afford to cheat or overcharge the caretaker, or the agreement will backslide to the landlord/tenant level and the premises will suffer. And, just as obviously, the sitter who rips off the householder or fails to properly maintain the property risks getting booted out and not having references for his next move. Our own home-minding ventures have remained, I'm glad to say, on a more idealistic plane; but it's good to know that controls are there for both parties to fall back on.