House sitting in Berkeley

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

Owners who listed here mostly had sitters to choose between: 69% of 341 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Berkeley has 38 open sits across 27 homes right now. Living in sits is excellent here: 98 gapless days across 1 sit starting 12 Sep.

Open sits38across 27 homes
Applicants / sit2.6tracked-city median 1
Median stay6 nights45% run a week+
Posting lead11 wkhalf post 52–116d out
Gapless days981 sit, from 12 Sep
Plan your dates in Berkeleyexcellent
3.2 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 98 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 12 Sep — excellent, against the cities we track.

12 Sep1 handovers · 98 nights19 Dec

Remove that chain and 30 days remain — 2 sitters could live here at once.

todayopen sits · next 90 days · 4 days with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
6 months listed today

Hosts post about 11 weeks ahead (half between 52–116 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 11 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
2
August 2026
11
September 2026
11
October 2026
7
November 2026
3
December 2026
4
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
69%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 7 in 10 · n=341 · ±5pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 76%
11%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 714 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 2,223 since 2014
by year (floors): 2023 335 · 2024 486 · 2025 712

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
38 open listings · snapshot

Open Berkeley listings average 2.6 applicants, and 10% currently have none at all.

Only 47% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 38 open listings.

Stays & pets
27 homes open now

The median stay is 6 nights; 45% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 24%4–7 34%8–14 29%15–28 8%29+ 5%

Of 27 homes: 15 are dogs-only, 7 cats-only, 3 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 56%dogs + cats 11%cats only 26%other / no pets 7%
How Berkeley compares
rank among 26 tracked cities
Sitter competition (balanced)62nd percentile
Open supply (one of the thinner markets)10th percentile
Chainability (excellent)80th 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 Berkeley?

Measured, not guessed: of 341 Berkeley listings watched from zero applications, 69% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 11% 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 Berkeley?

Yes — at least 2,223 sits have provably completed in Berkeley since 2014, 714 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 Berkeley?

Open listings currently average 2.6 applicants, 10% have none yet, and only 47% have three or more — snapshots across 38 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Berkeley house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 11 weeks before its start date; half post between 52 and 116 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Berkeley?

The median stay is 6 nights, and 45% of open sits run a week or longer.

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

Today's board chains into 98 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 12 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”, “excellent”) 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.