Cheap Rent Option - House sitting?

miss_tabby

Hi everyone,

I am a student and about to leave university and am looking for a place to rent. I have heard there is an agency (i think it is called house angels or something like that ) who place tenants in short term lets to look after vacant properties. Does anyone have a website for this?

Thanks!

Doozergirl

http://www.camelotproperty.com/home.php/b/gbr-en/home/

An old regular actually works for these people. It's house sitting with a difference!

PasturesNew

I looked into Camelot and they're only in a few areas.

My first thoughts when I read the OP's posting were:
- housesitting is usually when people go on holiday, you still usually need your own actual base to live at between gigs and you'd be forever moving, so with housesitting you probably would just have holiday luggage with you and not your life trappings
- I'd expect that now you'd be looking for a job. Most housesitting jobs require that you are in the property pretty much 24/7. Restrictions often exist where you can't leave the property after dark and during daylight can only leave it 1-3 hours
- it might be difficult to get on the books of housesitters since you're responsible for the property and perhaps it might be perceived that a student without experience of running their own household would not have sufficient life experience to be able to make some of the decisions necessary if things went wrong. Ditto with insurance, there might be an age clause in the policy of the agency

Housesitting isn't like renting a property. You really are tied to the property. Unable to go to work. Unable to go out and socialise.

Whereas I can accept that there will be exceptions, I just wanted to give you my thoughts so you are prepared when you come across these that they might be issues in some cases.

Good luck

miss_tabby

Thanks for this! The camelot thing does look good, I was looking for properties in London and only temporary as I probably will be able to take out a mortgage in about a year. Being a student may be a problem as they seem to want employment references and I have only really had part time jobs, I have a full time job lined up for september so maybe they would take this into account? As for not being able to go out to work I can't really do this.