My girlfriend’s mother is going away for 5 nights, and is going to have her niece (20 or 21 years old) house sit - basically, water flowers, take care of her dog (walking it, feeding, etc) and generally keep an eye on things. She’ll stay at the house for 5 nights for the dog.
How much do you think you should pay her niece for this?
If it matters, location is upstate NY, small town between Rochester and Buffalo.
If she wasn’t house sitting she’d be living at her parents house (summer break from college).
My wife & I always get my mom to house sit for us, and we always pay her $150 a week. It’s not really ‘pay’, more of a “thanks a lot, we appreciate it”
Unless you’re hiring a neighborhood kid or a relative I can’t imagine an adult professional taking this on for 20.00 a day. It seems absurdly inadequate. 100.00 is (IMO) around the minimum a professional should charge to be utterly responsible for overseeing someone’s house and pets.
Looks like she is thinking of giving her $150 for the 5 days. That appears reasonable based on comments above, if not a big high, but since its her young niece she doesn’t mind.
I pay the neighbor (early 20’s and a friend of my son) $20 a day to take care of our dog, take in the the mail and generally hang out to make the place look lived in. The assumption is that he want’s a place to hang out away form home, with a big screen TV and no parents to bug him so the $20 is really just for taking the dog out.
We just went on a 7 night trip and paid a young couple $300 to care for our house and 12 cats (yes, a dozen). We have done this for years but have gradually been raising the price. 2 years ago our house sitter found one of the cats badly injured and had to take him to the vet for us, where he was euthanized, a sad and difficult scene. Most years it is perfectly easy but you never know what might come up, and I think having a small number of people we know and pay fairly well over the years is a great thing. It makes being away nicer.
Well, when we were in university my (now husband but then boyfriend) and I did it for a week for a professor of ours. We watched their dog and took care of the house. Terms weren’t discussed beforehand - though we assumed we’d be given at least some token pay - but we didn’t even get so much as a thank you card.
Kind of annoying, but I guess she assumed she was doing US a favour as we were both still living at home with our parents at the time.
I know an 80 year old lady who lives in a yurt during the warm months, and house sits for free during the cold months. Seems like the perfect arrangement for her!
