House sitting in Seattle

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

Owners who listed here mostly had sitters to choose between: 61% of 1,346 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Seattle has 262 open sits across 166 homes right now. Living in sits is excellent here: 105 gapless days across 3 back-to-back sits starting 21 Sep.

Open sits262across 166 homes
Applicants / sit1.7tracked-city median 1
Median stay8 nights58% run a week+
Posting lead12 wkhalf post 53–132d out
Gapless days1053 back-to-back sits, from 21 Sep
Plan your dates in Seattleexcellent
20.2 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 105 consecutive housed days across 3 back-to-back sits beginning 21 Sep — excellent, against the cities we track. At least one sit is open on 180 consecutive days from today, which is the ceiling — those windows overlap and cannot all be taken.

21 Sep3 handovers · 105 nights4 Jan

Remove that chain and 93 days, 91 days, 91 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 12 weeks ahead (half between 53–132 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 12 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
6
August 2026
65
September 2026
66
October 2026
43
November 2026
49
December 2026
30
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
61%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 6 in 10 · n=1,346 · ±3pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 76%
8%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 3,087 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 9,373 since 2014
by year (floors): 2023 1,422 · 2024 2,043 · 2025 2,987

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
262 open listings · snapshot

Open Seattle listings average 1.7 applicants, and 23% currently have none at all.

Only 27% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 262 open listings.

Stays & pets
166 homes open now

The median stay is 8 nights; 58% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 16%4–7 32%8–14 30%15–28 16%29+ 5%

Of 166 homes: 93 are dogs-only, 50 cats-only, 16 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 56%dogs + cats 10%cats only 30%other / no pets 4%
How Seattle compares
rank among 26 tracked cities
Sitter competition (balanced)40th percentile
Open supply (one of the deepest markets)96th percentile
Chainability (excellent)86th 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 Seattle?

Measured, not guessed: of 1,346 Seattle listings watched from zero applications, 61% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 8% 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 Seattle?

Yes — at least 9,373 sits have provably completed in Seattle since 2014, 3,087 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 Seattle?

Open listings currently average 1.7 applicants, 23% have none yet, and only 27% have three or more — snapshots across 262 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Seattle house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 12 weeks before its start date; half post between 53 and 132 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Seattle?

The median stay is 8 nights, and 58% of open sits run a week or longer.

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

Today's board chains into 105 consecutive housed days across 3 back-to-back sits beginning 21 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.