So, Dweezil (not quite 17) has decided he wants to start a house-sitting business. Not “stay in the house while you’re on sabbatical”, but “water the cat, feed the mail” sort of tasks.
We’re trying to get him to focus on what he should charge, and what he should offer in exchange. I’m thinking a ballpark of 10 dollars a day (this is DC metro), and:
take in mail, your house
enter house, turn lights on / off to make it look lived in
bring in packages
light gardening (extra charge)
small pet care such as caged animals
Thoughts on other things he should offer.
Also should he go a la carte e.g. mail takein is 2 a day, pets are 3 a day, etc.?
I hate to make pee pee on this idea, but unless we’re just talking about offering services to trusted friends and family, it sounds pretty risky. That said, I would pay $10/day to some kid I know to take care of small animals (I’m talking hamsters and goldfish) and bring in the mail. An almost 17 year old kid I don’t know isn’t getting my house keys.
I concur, in principle… though this particular nearly-17 is about as likely to have a party / do something illicit, as he is to sprout wings and fly :).
Of course, the houses to which he’ll deliver his fliers won’t necessarily know that, and it’s quite possible that, as a result, he won’t get any clients. Which is fine by us - but we have to let him try.
Things to consider:
[ul]
[li]How far will his maximum range be? There’s a point at which transportation costs eat your profits.[/li][li]Is the house in a safe neighborhood?[/li][li]Does he mind spending the night?[/li][/ul]
Most of my business is petsitting, which has its own separate set of concerns that I can describe if you want.
Really, the single biggest thing is proving you’re reliable and trustworthy. Whenever I leave a house, I make sure it’s in the same or better condition. If people think they can trust your son, and word spreads, he’ll have a solid business in no time.
My cat/house-sitter has a police check report, your son might want to consider something similar. Caveat - I’m in the UK so processes in the US might be different.
Mine also offers to put the garbage/recycling bins out if we’re away on the usual collection days.
We’re fortunate enough to have friends and family close by that can do any house-sitting or pet-sitting for us, but it did cross my mind as to what I would do if we didn’t. I would certainly pay a trusted teenager up to 10 bucks a day to do the following while I was out of town:
Feed and water the cat, and play with/pet the cat for a little while, and scoop the litter box
Water the houseplants
Water the porch and patio plants
Bring in the mail and paper
Doing all that should take about a half hour at most, or at least that’s what my mom said it took when she did it for us last week.
I have a couple friends doing exactly this in fresno , ca
$19 first visit per day (mail, water plants, feed/medicate animals)
+$10 second visit (multiple feedings or medications)
+$10 30 min walk for dog/s
+varies if need to provide food (like you didn’t leave enough for whole time)
As I understand it bonding against theft and such is not done with the owner, only employees to minimize the impact of an employee messing with a customers stuff.
I am in the DC area. We pay our cat/house sitter $20/day. She feeds the cats and fish, deals with the litter box, collects the mail and newspapers, and may or may not water plants. (Because she is also our regular housecleaner and is all kinds of awesome, she also tends to take on an extra cleaning project during a longer vacation, like cleaning out our refrigerator or tidying the basement. I love her.)
It’s been a while since I’ve hired someone from an official cat-sitting business, but I think that those in the area are more along the lines of $30 for the first visit each day.
For Dweezil, I’d recommend that he make a list of things included in the base charge: mail, packages, lights, plants, fish, trash cans to curb and back. That might be $10 per day. Adding cat care would be another $5 per day. Any outdoor work, like running the sprinkler or watering the tomatoes, would be another $5 per day charge. Etc.
Do you have a neighborhood listserv to advertise on? I always see people looking for teens to house/pet sit on our listserv.
I pay $18/day for my woderful pet sitter. She feeds them, medicates as needed, plays with them, takes in the mail, checks the house, has done some light cleaning, takes professional pics of the furballs for fun, leaves daily notes stating what all she has done. She is a licensed pet sitter - he may want to check what that entails. He should know that there will be times where clients will call him out of the blue with an emergency - how he would handle that is (obviously) important. I’ve had to call our sitter when I was locked out of my house and no one was around. She was over in 10 minutes, no charge. I did send her a thank you gift anyways.