We just returned from a vacation. An employee/friend house-sat for use. She lived in our home and fed the horses morning and evening for a week. We stocked food per her liking and she says she had a nice vacation (she used the fireplace, sauna, etc).
I never nailed down how much she expected to be paid. I asked my gf and she said $350. Thinking about it, that would be $50 a day. Sounded good, so I gave the house-sitter a thank you card with $350 in it.
Turns out my gf hadn’t really thought about it. She meant tree-fiddy as a South Park reference!
Anyway, what is the going rate? I’m hoping to use her services in the future.
No stalls. We did all the heavy stuff right before leaving and left her with as little to do as possible. I mainly want to make sure I didn’t cheat her. She is a good employee, a nice girl, etc. If I didn’t give her a cent she wouldn’t have complained.
kayaker, I just did an extremely scientific poll (by which I mean I asked my husband and two friends at work) that indicates that $50 per day is what they would pretty much charge. So you’re fine.
Having someone stop by my house twice a day to take my dogs out and scoop the cat box, plus bring in my mail, cost me almost $35 per day. So $50 for a live-in sitter seems very reasonable.
When I was looking for a pet sitter for one dog for 10 days, professionals were going to cost in the range of $50 to $60/day. We ended up having the 18 yo daughter of the family across the street come over and stay while we were gone. We paid her $250 for the 10 days. She was more than thrilled to be “on her own” for the time and we weren’t worried about wild parties with her mom across the street.
My going rate is $35 a day. I usually only mention that if someone asks, though. People often pay more than that on their own.
I do virtually always take care of a decent number of animals, though, and I do fosters and special-needs dogs and little dogs who pee on the floor and so forth. People usually leave food and it really is pretty much a nice vacation- you’re paying me to do what you’d be doing on a day off. And I can still go to work and make the money I normally would.
It might be good to pay more if you live in a remote area and they have to take off work to house-sit for you or if it requires a huge amount of work or if house-sitting is their main job or something. I’d be thrilled if I got $350 for a week.
My going rate is $15-20 per visit depending on how far away you are and how complicated the visit is.
If I stay over night it’s a flat $50 per night.
It’s nice if people leave food and drink but if not I can bring my own. Even if I get use of the hot tub, big screen TV and other perks I’m still not home.
I charge $72 for an overnight. That means a 12-hour stay (at least; longer if I feel like it) and covers at least 3 individual visits (which would be about $22 each). That is, an “overnight” will encompass at least an evening visit, a late-night visit, and a morning visit. And of course if the animals need attention late-late or in the middle of the night, that’s included too.
Horses? I wouldn’t house-sit AND care for horses for only $50/day. Horses are a lot of work.
I had someone balk over Thanksgiving at paying $72. I said I could go down to $65 if she was booking 3 nights or more but that it wasn’t worth it to me to be away from my own house and animals for less than that, and she should check out the agencies in this area to compare prices. (They all charge about the same.) She apparently has a housekeeper who will do it for about $25/night. I said if she could find quality, reliable, and loving petcare care for that, she should go for it, but I could not match such a low price. I’d rather stay home and do my own thing.
Really? I just did evening feeding in less than 15 minutes. Pellets, hay, fill water buckets and out. What else is there??
Anyway, I manned-up and asked her for future reference. Heart-to-heart she said $25 a day was what she had been hoping for. And she got a kick about the food choices (we asked what she liked and stocked accordingly).
We have a couple of trips planned and she is looking forward to staying, especially once it is warm enough to saddle up and ride.
I don’t do livestock but if I did it would probably be more but it would depend on how much it was to do too. Fifteen minutes would probably be in the $50, but if it was a lot of shoveling and hauling it would be more.
As someone who does a lot of free housesitting for family, it is a pain in the butt to be away from home. Packing is a pain, schlepping stuff around is a pain, not having your things on hand is a pain, cooking out of someone else’s kitchen is a pain, sleeping in a strange bed is a pain…it’s not strenuous work, but it is significantly disruptive.
You probably know this, but in the future I’d be very careful to ask for her rate first or make a well-supported proposal (“Based on what I’ve seen on Craig’s list, I can offer the rate of…”). Not having a clear agreement on compensation when performing personal tasks for a supervisor is a really uncomfortable position to be in, because of the power dynamics involved.
My cat-sitter is a neighbour, a retired veterinarian, and a personal friend. When I have to be out of town, he looks after my cats; and always does so very well.
Because he is a neighbour and a friend, I don’t offer him cash money; but a bottle of single-malt Scotch will always be a gift from my cats to him for looking after them. The length of time governs on how rare (and thus, how expensive) the Scotch is.
It seems to really depend on the region you’re in and the type of services you need. I know a lot of people who do cat-sitting (as my anecdotal example). Usually for healthy cats that just need food, water, and litter cleaning, the charge is $10 a visit, with strong recommendations toward two visits a day, minimum 1 hour per visit. For technicians like me, who take on clients with special needs cats who are diabetic or hyperthyroid or in renal failure, it’s $25 a visit, two visits a day.
To me, overnight stays seem like $50 is pretty reasonable if it’s mostly basic horse care. My friend who does the special needs animals would likely charge more because if she’s staying overnight somewhere she can’t take as many jobs - she only takes on three at a time normally, but it takes anywhere from 6 to 10 hours to complete 6 visits a day.
I pay mine $40 a day to live in, feed/blanket horses morning and night (no stables to clean), dogs/cats (including litter trays) twice a day plus maintain house to a decent standard. I also expect the person to stay overnight most nights as I want company for my animals.
I kind of expect it to work out to be about 2 hours a day (some days more, some less) including a walk of the dog. It should take much less time than that … but I feel I can ask for extras if needed (last one mowed the lawns for me using my ride-on etc).
I pay my pet-sitter $30 for two visits to my dog per day, and no overnight stay. Considering there were multiple animals in the household, and she stayed overnight, $50 seems more fair. Certainly, not an overpay to the pet-sitter.
I pay my dog trainer $35 to come check on the dogs a few times, walk them, and play with them each day when I’m out of town. While over night is certainly a whole thing, you did also provide her with food, so I can’t imagine paying much more than $50.