House sitting in Bellingham
Field report · updated 2026-07-29 · live corpus
For pet parents · what actually happened
Drew 2+ applicants sitters
42%
about 4 in 10 · 2+ applications in 48h · n=175 · ±7pp
43 measured cities run 22–95% · median 77%
Filled to the cap in 48h
2%
filled to the five-application cap · each watched from zero applications
speed, not eventual success
Sits provably completed
352
in the last 12 months · at least 1,052 since 2017 · each required a chosen sitter
by year (floors): 2023 168 · 2024 234 · 2025 342
Open sits6043 homes
Applicants / sit0.9median 1 across cities
Median stay6 nights48% run a week+
Posting lead12 wkhalf 54–128d out
Gapless days362 back-to-back sits · 26 Sep
Floors, not verdicts — fast-filling listings escape measurement, and these are 48-hour rates: a speed gauge; many sits fill after the window. · How we measure →
Plan your dates in Bellinghamthin
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 · 7 days with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
Hosts post about 12 weeks ahead (half between 54–128 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.
Listing? Posting about 12 weeks out is normal here.
For sitters · competition right nowbalanced
Open Bellingham listings average 0.9 applicants, and 48% currently have none at all.
Stays & pets
The median stay is 6 nights; 48% run a week or longer.
≤3 nights 28%4–7 23%8–14 35%15–28 12%29+ 2%
Plan around the animals first — they are the job.
dogs only 56%dogs + cats 12%cats only 23%other / no pets 9%
How Bellingham compares
Sitter competition (balanced)40th percentile
Open supply (below the median)48th percentile
Chainability (thin)20th 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 0.9 applicants, 48% have none yet, and only 3% have three or more — snapshots across 60 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.
How far in advance are Bellingham house sits posted?
The median listing appears about 12 weeks before its start date; half post between 54 and 128 days out.
How long is a typical house sit in Bellingham?
The median stay is 6 nights, and 48% 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
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.