Housesitting and Property Caretaking in the Current Economic Climate

In recent weeks, I have been receiving phone calls and emails on a daily basis that are very similar in sentiment to the one I've included below:

Gary, with the big slump in the economy, I am wondering how The Caretaker Gazette is doing - are there still property owners who need housesitters and caretakers? I am struggling and I wonder if this has affected the property caretaking field. E. B., Ada, OK

In my response to Eric, I told him that, here at the Gazette, we have been as busy as ever. The global economic downturn has not had a negative impact on the demand for housesitters and property caretakers. In fact, we have had several listings for housesitters and caretakers from real estate investors who are stuck with empty homes that they can't unload and from property owners who couldn't sell their homes and, rather than leave them vacant when they were transferred to another location, will employ the services of a caretaker or housesitter to look after their property.

On the caretaker and housesitter side, we have many people who have turned to housesitting and property caretaking either because of the rent-free living aspect of it or because they have been laid off due to their company's downsizing. Some of our subscribers who are new to caretaking and housesitting have told us that, rather than search for jobs in a down economy where unemployment is high and jobs are scarce, they prefer to spend time as property caretakers.


JOURNALIST REQUEST - As a caretaker/housesitter or a property owner, how have you been affected by the economic downturn and how has either working as a caretaker or housesitter or employing a caretaker helped you? We have a journalist who is interested in writing an article about this and would welcome your first-person accounts. You can email your experiences directly to the Gazette at caretaker@caretaker.org