House sitting in Portland

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

Owners who listed here had roughly even odds of a choice of sitters: 58% of 1,138 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Portland has 251 open sits across 202 homes right now. Living in sits is excellent here: 108 gapless days across 10 back-to-back sits starting 27 Jul.

Open sits251across 202 homes
Applicants / sit1.4tracked-city median 1
Median stay5 nights39% run a week+
Posting lead8 wkhalf post 32–96d out
Gapless days10810 back-to-back sits, from 27 Jul
Plan your dates in Portlandexcellent
18.7 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 108 consecutive housed days across 10 back-to-back sits beginning 27 Jul — excellent, against the cities we track. At least one sit is open on 179 consecutive days from today, which is the ceiling — those windows overlap and cannot all be taken.

27 Jul10 handovers · 108 nights12 Nov

Remove that chain and 104 days, 101 days, 95 days (+6 more) remain — 10 sitters could live here at once.

todayopen sits · next 90 days · never a day with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
6 months listed today

Hosts post about 8 weeks ahead (half between 32–96 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 8 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
20
August 2026
99
September 2026
63
October 2026
41
November 2026
16
December 2026
11
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
58%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 6 in 10 · n=1,138 · ±3pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 77%
7%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 2,807 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 8,140 since 2014
by year (floors): 2023 1,159 · 2024 1,846 · 2025 2,769

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
251 open listings · snapshot

Open Portland listings average 1.4 applicants, and 37% currently have none at all.

Only 23% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 251 open listings.

Stays & pets
202 homes open now

The median stay is 5 nights; 39% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 29%4–7 39%8–14 18%15–28 9%29+ 4%

Of 202 homes: 95 are dogs-only, 43 cats-only, 53 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 47%dogs + cats 26%cats only 21%other / no pets 5%
How Portland compares
rank among 27 tracked cities
Sitter competition (balanced)40th percentile
Open supply (one of the deepest markets)96th percentile
Chainability (excellent)85th percentile

Percentile rank among the 27 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 Portland?

Measured, not guessed: of 1,138 Portland listings watched from zero applications, 58% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 7% 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 Portland?

Yes — at least 8,140 sits have provably completed in Portland since 2014, 2,807 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 Portland?

Open listings currently average 1.4 applicants, 37% have none yet, and only 23% have three or more — snapshots across 251 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Portland house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 8 weeks before its start date; half post between 32 and 96 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Portland?

The median stay is 5 nights, and 39% of open sits run a week or longer.

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

Today's board chains into 108 consecutive housed days across 10 back-to-back sits beginning 27 Jul. That is one bookable itinerary from live listings — it moves daily as sits are taken and posted.

Compare markets

All 27 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 27 cities in this corpus with meaningful supply — never editorial.

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