There are many traps for beginner house sitters. One we learned from experience is to ask the prospective home owner if they own their house or if they are renting.
If they own their own home, then you know where you stand. But if, as happened to us in one house, the house was rented, what complications might you face?
Firstly, you might like to make sure that they advise the Real Estate agent who cares for the house. In our case, the home owners/renters did not advise the Real Estate people so they didn't know there were strangers living in the house for nine weeks while the others were overseas.
The reason they found out was that they were phoning the home owners/renters for money owed for unpaid accounts. We got several calls from them about unpaid accounts and I have a feeling that this was normal for this family, who actually were miles behind in many payments and we had to field the calls. The real estate company was not too pleased to find us there, and not being told by the owner/renter.
You also might like to ask the owner/renter how they normally pay the rent and make sure that some sort of automatic payment is in place so that while you are there you are not going to be in a compromised situation.
This has only happened to us once, but even so, it is one question we ask every time now.
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