‘We Used House-Sitting To Plan Our Cross-Country Move—Until Life Got In the Way’

When Rebecca Dharmapalan and her partner began planning their big move from Oakland, CA, to Brooklyn, NY, they wanted to get a real feel for the neighborhoods before committing, so they turned to house-sitting to test-drive their future life."A cross-country move is a big financial bet, and I didn’t want us to make it on a hunch," Dharmapalan tells Realtor.com®. The 30-year-old Californian had lived in New York City before, but her partner, Nekhi, had visited only once and was hesitant to uproot his life on the West Coast.Dharmapalan concluded that the best way to get Nekhi on board would be to live in the Big Apple for some time, trying different neighborhoods on for size. But doing so through conventional routes, such as sublets and hotels, would have cost the young couple thousands of dollars a month."And every dollar spent trying out the city was a dollar we wouldn’t have for the real move," notes Dharmapalan. Their workaround was TrustedHousesitters—a global pet-sitting platform operating in 180 countries. The online exchange connects pet owners with pet and house sitters. Both homeowners and sitters pay an annual subscription fee, ranging from $129 to $259, to access the mark...