House sitting in San Francisco
Owners who listed here mostly had sitters to choose between: 84% of 1,282 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. San Francisco has 162 open sits across 142 homes right now. Living in sits is good here: 92 gapless days across 6 back-to-back sits starting 27 Jul.
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 92 consecutive housed days across 6 back-to-back sits beginning 27 Jul — good, against the cities we track. At least one sit is open on 159 consecutive days from today, which is the ceiling — those windows overlap and cannot all be taken.
Remove that chain and 75 days, 69 days, 67 days (+6 more) remain — 10 sitters could live here at once.
Hosts post about 6 weeks ahead (half between 24–79 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.
Listing? Posting about 6 weeks out is normal here.
of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours
filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours
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 →
Open San Francisco listings average 3 applicants, and 10% currently have none at all.
Only 65% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 162 open listings.
The median stay is 7.5 nights; 56% run a week or longer.
Of 142 homes: 85 are dogs-only, 41 cats-only, 15 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.
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.
Will my pet-sitting listing get applicants in San Francisco?
Measured, not guessed: of 1,282 San Francisco listings watched from zero applications, 84% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 29% 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 San Francisco?
Yes — at least 9,469 sits have provably completed in San Francisco since 2013, 3,207 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 San Francisco?
Open listings currently average 3 applicants, 10% have none yet, and only 65% have three or more — snapshots across 162 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.
How far in advance are San Francisco house sits posted?
The median listing appears about 6 weeks before its start date; half post between 24 and 79 days out.
How long is a typical house sit in San Francisco?
The median stay is 7.5 nights, and 56% of open sits run a week or longer.
Can you live in San Francisco full-time on house sits?
Today's board chains into 92 consecutive housed days across 6 back-to-back sits beginning 27 Jul. That is one bookable itinerary from live listings — it moves daily as sits are taken and posted.
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 (“competitive”, “good”) 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.