House sitting in Santa Fe
Field report · updated 2026-07-29 · live corpus
For pet parents · what actually happened
Drew 2+ applicants sitters
43%
about 4 in 10 · 2+ applications in 48h · n=328 · ±5pp
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
732
in the last 12 months · at least 2,181 since 2014 · each required a chosen sitter
by year (floors): 2023 299 · 2024 470 · 2025 743
Open sits8869 homes
Applicants / sit1.1median 1 across cities
Median stay9 nights65% run a week+
Posting lead10 wkhalf 51–118d out
Gapless days733 back-to-back sits · 4 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 Santa Fegood
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 73 consecutive housed days across 3 back-to-back sits beginning 4 Sep — good, against the cities we track.
4 Sep3 handovers · 73 nights16 Nov
Remove that chain and 54 days, 52 days, 40 days (+1 more) remain — 5 sitters could live here at once.
todayopen sits · next 90 days · never a day with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
Hosts post about 10 weeks ahead (half between 51–118 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.
Listing? Posting about 10 weeks out is normal here.
For sitters · competition right nowbalanced
Open Santa Fe listings average 1.1 applicants, and 43% currently have none at all.
Stays & pets
The median stay is 9 nights; 65% run a week or longer.
≤3 nights 15%4–7 27%8–14 38%15–28 18%29+ 2%
Plan around the animals first — they are the job.
dogs only 57%dogs + cats 26%cats only 12%other / no pets 6%
How Santa Fe compares
Sitter competition (balanced)40th percentile
Open supply (above the median)60th percentile
Chainability (good)68th 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 Santa Fe?
Measured, not guessed: of 328 Santa Fe listings watched from zero applications, 43% 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 Santa Fe?
Yes — at least 2,181 sits have provably completed in Santa Fe since 2014, 732 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 Santa Fe?
Open listings currently average 1.1 applicants, 43% have none yet, and only 17% have three or more — snapshots across 88 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.
How far in advance are Santa Fe house sits posted?
The median listing appears about 10 weeks before its start date; half post between 51 and 118 days out.
How long is a typical house sit in Santa Fe?
The median stay is 9 nights, and 65% of open sits run a week or longer.
Can you live in Santa Fe full-time on house sits?
Today's board chains into 73 consecutive housed days across 3 back-to-back sits beginning 4 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”, “good”) 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.