House sitting in Bellingham

Field report · updated 2026-07-27 · live corpus

Owners who listed here had roughly even odds of a choice of sitters: 42% of 175 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Bellingham has 67 open sits across 36 homes right now. Living in sits is thin here: 36 gapless days across 2 back-to-back sits starting 26 Sep.

Open sits67across 36 homes
Applicants / sit0.8tracked-city median 1
Median stay6 nights49% run a week+
Posting lead13 wkhalf post 52–124d out
Gapless days362 back-to-back sits, from 26 Sep
Plan your dates in Bellinghamthin
3.9 sits open on a typical day

Pick your window. We chain the open sits that hand over cleanly inside it — computed right here, nothing sent anywhere.

The open listings chain into 36 consecutive housed days across 2 back-to-back sits beginning 26 Sep — thin, against the cities we track.

26 Sep2 handovers · 36 nights1 Nov

Remove that chain and 35 days remain — 2 sitters could live here at once.

todayopen sits · next 90 days · 10 days with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
6 months listed today

Hosts post about 13 weeks ahead (half between 52–124 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 13 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
5
August 2026
17
September 2026
17
October 2026
14
November 2026
12
December 2026
2
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
42%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 4 in 10 · n=175 · ±7pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 77%
2%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 352 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 1,052 since 2017
by year (floors): 2023 168 · 2024 234 · 2025 342

Floors, not verdicts — fast-filling listings are the ones most likely to escape measurement, and these are 48-hour rates: a speed gauge, not eventual success; many sits fill after the window. How we measure →

For sitters · competition right nowbalanced
67 open listings · snapshot

Open Bellingham listings average 0.8 applicants, and 49% currently have none at all.

Only 4% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 67 open listings.

Stays & pets
36 homes open now

The median stay is 6 nights; 49% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 27%4–7 24%8–14 37%15–28 10%29+ 2%

Of 36 homes: 22 are dogs-only, 7 cats-only, 5 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 61%dogs + cats 14%cats only 19%other / no pets 6%
How Bellingham compares
rank among 26 tracked cities
Sitter competition (balanced)38th percentile
Open supply (below the median)48th percentile
Chainability (thin)24th percentile

Percentile rank among the 26 tracked cities with meaningful supply. Competition reads sitter-side: a higher percentile means more applicants per open listing — harder for sitters, busier for owners.

Common questions

Will my pet-sitting listing get applicants in Bellingham?

Measured, not guessed: of 175 Bellingham listings watched from zero applications, 42% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 2% reached the five-application cap. Both are floors — fast-filling listings are the ones most likely to escape measurement — and both are 48-hour rates: listings often keep drawing applications after the window we count.

Do house sits actually get filled in Bellingham?

Yes — at least 1,052 sits have provably completed in Bellingham since 2017, 352 of them ending in the last 12 months. A completion requires a chosen sitter, so every one had at least one real application. These are floors from listing histories, and they cannot be turned into a fill rate: sits that went unfilled leave no trace, so there is no denominator.

How many sitters apply to a house sit in Bellingham?

Open listings currently average 0.8 applicants, 49% have none yet, and only 4% have three or more — snapshots across 67 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Bellingham house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 13 weeks before its start date; half post between 52 and 124 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Bellingham?

The median stay is 6 nights, and 49% of open sits run a week or longer.

Can you live in Bellingham full-time on house sits?

Today's board chains into 36 consecutive housed days across 2 back-to-back sits beginning 26 Sep. That is one bookable itinerary from live listings — it moves daily as sits are taken and posted.

Compare markets

All 26 tracked cities →

How these figures are computed

Open sits — live listings with a current or future date window; a home with several windows counts once per window.

Applicants — the count reported on each open listing at last refresh.

Posting lead — days between a listing first appearing and its start date, median across open listings.

Gapless days — the longest bookable run of consecutive covered days assembled from open sits beginning within the next 90 days: no overlaps, each sit starting the day the previous one ends.

Judgment words (“balanced”, “thin”) are percentiles against the 26 cities in this corpus with meaningful supply — never editorial.

Full methodology — how these are measured, and what they cannot say.