This little-known app means I live in London for £99 a year

Waking up in a plush bed in a spacious bedroom on the second floor of a London house, I felt the most relaxed I had in ages.

There were windows overlooking a verdant garden, I could hear birds singing and a fluffy labradoodle soon rushed up the stairs to bid me good morning.

Yes, this comfy abode had a lot to do with my renewed sense of zen. 

But the best part? This house didn’t come with a mortgage, rent or bills attached.

Here’s the catch though: This three-floor detached house with a huge garden and a spacious kitchen in the heart of London, was not actually mine. In fact, it belongs to a perfect stranger.

No, I wasn’t squatting or breaking and entering. I’ve actually been living in London rent-free for the last nine months and it’s all thanks to an app.

My husband and I moved to Paris in 2020, but we had to travel to London once a month when we had work here. 

Unsurprisingly, we quickly tired of relying on expensive hotels and Airbnbs for accommodation. And that’s when we found ‘Trusted House Sitters’.

When one of my friends first told me about the app, I was skeptical: The idea of staying in a stranger’s home felt weird. Then I remembered that renting an Airbnb is not that different, so I figured I’d give it a look.

The app was free to download and while there was no acceptance or heavy application process there was a £99 fee to pay to join – this is mainly to help the app to stay afloat and also act as a deterrent for people who don’t plan to use the service appropriately. 

As an annual fee I didn’t think that was too bad, so I decided to sign up. 

I filled in a profile with information and photos and then began my search for our first homesit and found it works much like AirBnB or Booking.com: You look for the location you are interested in, select your available dates, and scroll through the options until you find an offer that you like the look of. 

However, as the service is review-based – Trusted House Sitters says 79,212 pets/houses were added to the app in 2023 and they currently have over 200,000 members in more than 140 countries – I was warned it might be hard to find our first sit.

Generally, you have to send a request to the owners selling yourself as a great house/pet-sitter and it’s important to bear in mind that some homeowners have specific requirements or preferences.

For example, I’ve seen listings where owners have stated that they prefer couples over those travelling alone or even sitters who speak the local language or who have experience with farm animals. It all depends on what kind of adventure you are looking for.  

Luckily, I managed to find a pet sit in a remote part of France, only accessible by car, which I had. This meant that the competition was thin, and the chances of me getting the sit were pretty high. 

After having a chat with the owners, we made our way to the Bordeaux region where we spent a week looking after two extremely well-behaved terriers in a lovely countryside villa, with a huge pool and a pizza oven in the garden that we put to very good use. We had so much fun that, from that moment on, most of our holidays or weekends away involved looking after someone’s pet. 

From there, we made sure to do a few pet sits that were easy for us to do (but not popular) all so we could get our first reviews. 

Gradually our reviews built up over time and before I knew it, three years of being on the app had passed.

In that time we’ve spent weeks in Barcelona and Amsterdam with the only requirement being to look after some cute pets. We even spent a week in a gorgeous villa in Tuscany, working from the pool instead of our boiling-hot apartment.

But it was only this year that I unlocked the app’s full potential. 

At the beginning of 2024, we decided we wanted to move back to London permanently. The only thing we hadn’t anticipated was the nightmare that the rental market had become post-Covid.  

Originally we’d hoped to find a place similar to the one we’d left behind for our Parisian adventure – a lovely two-bedroom flat in East London for roughly £1300 – but it soon became apparent that we were living a pipe dream.

We spent months trying to find a place but were gradually having to compromise on more and more of our needs.

Even when we came to accept that we might have to spend £1,600pm for 350sq ft, every single flat we saw was unlivable – complete with damp patches and a low ceiling – or fell through. 

By June we just thought that enough was enough. 

Throughout this time we had been pet-sitting for three months and we’d actually loved it. So, I realised, why not continue doing that for a while?

For this specific moment in our lives, it seemed like a perfect solution.

We could use this time to really figure out if coming back to London was a good idea for us and if so, where we felt more at home in the city. And not having bills to pay would also allow us to save money and give us more freedom in our work. 

Suddenly, I felt a lot less anxious and a whole lot freer.

Now, we’ve stayed in flats all over London including the luxurious stay I mentioned earlier. And when I woke up in that plush king-sized bed, I was glad all those flats we saw fell through. I’d never get to experience this otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, not every house is as incredible as this one: I’ve had dogs with separation anxiety and owners messaging me constantly, but overall, the positive experiences outweigh the bad ones. 

And really, how can I complain when they’re all free of charge?

Sometimes we stay for only a couple of days and others for months but doing this has allowed us to get to know the city in a way we never had before. 

Of course I know that this can’t last forever. Not having a fixed address is not a long-term solution and securing one sit after the other can be stressful, but I have loved this experience and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who can afford to be a bit nomadic.

If you work from home and have a flexible schedule, this app can allow you to live in different places while saving for a deposit or a big trip. 

For us, it’s been a great way to test out life in London again, and I plan to use it in the future for both trips and longer stays.

At the end of the day we all want a place to call home, but for right now, I’m okay with borrowing someone else’s.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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