House sitting in Madrid
Field report · updated 2026-07-29 · live corpus
For pet parents · what actually happened
Drew 2+ applicants sitters
90%
about 9 in 10 · 2+ applications in 48h · n=169 · ±5pp
43 measured cities run 22–95% · median 77%
Filled to the cap in 48h
59%
filled to the five-application cap · each watched from zero applications
speed, not eventual success
Sits provably completed
447
in the last 12 months · at least 1,203 since 2017 · each required a chosen sitter
by year (floors): 2023 155 · 2024 245 · 2025 437
Open sits118 homes
Gapless days241 sit · 21 Aug
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 Madrid
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 24 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 21 Aug.
21 Aug1 handovers · 24 nights14 Sep
todayopen sits · next 90 days · 40 days with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
Stays & pets
Too few open listings here to describe a typical stay length.
Plan around the animals first — they are the job.
dogs only 25%dogs + cats 12%cats only 62%
Common questions
Will my pet-sitting listing get applicants in Madrid?
Measured, not guessed: of 169 Madrid listings watched from zero applications, 90% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 59% 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 Madrid?
Yes — at least 1,203 sits have provably completed in Madrid since 2017, 447 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.
Can you live in Madrid full-time on house sits?
Today's board chains into 24 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 21 Aug. 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.
Full methodology — how these are measured, and what they cannot say.