House sitting in Victoria

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

Owners who listed here mostly had sitters to choose between: 74% of 251 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Victoria has 30 open sits across 29 homes right now. Living in sits is fair here: 37 gapless days across 1 sit starting 16 Sep.

Open sits30across 29 homes
Applicants / sit2.2tracked-city median 1
Median stay8.5 nights63% run a week+
Posting lead8 wkhalf post 39–103d out
Gapless days371 sit, from 16 Sep
Plan your dates in Victoriafair
3.2 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 37 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 16 Sep — fair, against the cities we track.

16 Sep1 handovers · 37 nights23 Oct

Remove that chain and 33 days remain — 2 sitters could live here at once.

todayopen sits · next 90 days · 3 days with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
6 months listed today

Hosts post about 8 weeks ahead (half between 39–103 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 8 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
2
August 2026
11
September 2026
11
October 2026
2
November 2026
2
December 2026
2
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
74%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 7 in 10 · n=251 · ±5pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 77%
14%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 584 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 1,777 since 2013
by year (floors): 2023 224 · 2024 360 · 2025 611

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
30 open listings · snapshot

Open Victoria listings average 2.2 applicants, and 10% currently have none at all.

Only 43% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 30 open listings.

Stays & pets
29 homes open now

The median stay is 8.5 nights; 63% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 13%4–7 33%8–14 17%15–28 30%29+ 7%

Of 29 homes: 13 are dogs-only, 8 cats-only, 8 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 45%dogs + cats 28%cats only 28%
How Victoria compares
rank among 27 tracked cities
Sitter competition (balanced)63rd percentile
Open supply (one of the thinner markets)4th percentile
Chainability (fair)29th 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 Victoria?

Measured, not guessed: of 251 Victoria listings watched from zero applications, 74% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 14% 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 Victoria?

Yes — at least 1,777 sits have provably completed in Victoria since 2013, 584 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 Victoria?

Open listings currently average 2.2 applicants, 10% have none yet, and only 43% have three or more — snapshots across 30 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Victoria house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 8 weeks before its start date; half post between 39 and 103 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Victoria?

The median stay is 8.5 nights, and 63% of open sits run a week or longer.

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

Today's board chains into 37 consecutive housed days across 1 sit beginning 16 Sep. 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”, “fair”) 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.