House Sitting Scams to Avoid (And How to Spot Them)

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House sitting scams are real, but they are also almost entirely avoidable. The warning signs are consistent, the patterns repeat themselves, and the single most effective protection, a live video call before you confirm anything, is something any legitimate homeowner will agree to without hesitation. If something feels off before you get on a plane, trust that feeling.

Caro and I have been house sitting for three years. We have completed 20 sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs. In that time, we have never been defrauded. That is not luck. It is a combination of using platforms with real verification in place, video calling every homeowner before confirming, and paying attention when something feels slightly wrong.

The platform that has anchored almost all of our sits is TrustedHouseSitters. If you are just getting started, a 25% discount on membership is available here. The reason I keep coming back to THS is directly connected to why scams are more common elsewhere, and I will explain that throughout this article.

I am not going to pretend that the house sitting world is crawling with fraudsters, because it is not. The overwhelming majority of homeowners and sitters are genuine people making a genuine exchange. But scams do exist, they cluster in specific environments, and knowing what to look for means you can move through this world with confidence rather than anxiety. If you are still figuring out the basics, the step-by-step guide to getting started in house sitting covers the full picture of how the process works before any of the scam awareness comes in.

Why House Sitting Attracts Scammers at All

House sitting operates on trust between two strangers who, in many cases, have never met in person and may be on opposite sides of the world. No money changes hands in a legitimate arrangement, which means there are no payment platforms or bank fraud teams acting as a backstop. The communication is warm and personal by nature, which makes it easier for bad actors to build false rapport quickly.

There is also something about the free accommodation framing that can lower people's guard. When you are not sending anyone rent money, it can feel like you have nothing to lose. But that thinking misses what is actually at stake: your travel costs if the sit turns out to be fake, your identity documents if someone is harvesting them, and your time if you have planned an entire trip around a listing that does not exist.

The other factor is the culture of the house sitting community itself. It markets itself as a high-trust environment, and for the most part it genuinely is. That is one of the things I love about it. But scammers deliberately target communities where trust is the operating assumption, because the defences people apply in more transactional environments tend to be lower. Understanding how much house sitting actually costs before you start helps set realistic expectations, including what you should never be asked to pay.

Facebook Groups: The Wild West of House Sitting

I am a member of several house sitting Facebook groups, including House Sitting Australia Wide, and I still browse them occasionally, not to find sits, but to observe what is being posted and how the community interacts. What I see every time is something I would describe as the Wild West. Someone posts a listing with photos and dates, and immediately there are dozens of comments and DMs. It moves fast, it feels open, and there is almost no structure around any of it.

The fundamental problem with Facebook groups is the complete absence of verification. There are no reviews tied to real interactions. There is no identity checking. There are no platform terms that meaningfully prohibit what homeowners can ask for. Because of that last point, I have seen listings in Facebook groups where a homeowner advertises a sit as free for a certain period and then makes clear they expect payment after that. On THS that would be a clear violation of the platform's terms. On Facebook, nothing stops it.

In most cases, the people posting in these groups are genuine. The majority of listings you find in a house sitting Facebook group are posted by real homeowners with real properties who simply prefer a less formal route. But the barrier to entry is zero. Creating a Facebook account takes minutes, and if a scammer gets reported and removed, they can create another one that same afternoon. That dynamic is why scams are disproportionately concentrated in free, open environments compared to paid platforms. Our guide on house sitting fees and what you should never pay goes into more detail on the payment boundaries that separate legitimate sits from scammy ones.

If you do use Facebook groups, apply every verification step I describe below, and apply them more carefully than you would on a paid platform, not less.

The Most Common Scam: Fake Listings and Stolen Photos

From what I have researched and observed, fake listings are the most prevalent scam in the house sitting world. The mechanics are straightforward. A scammer creates a listing using photos taken from a real estate website, a luxury vacation rental, or a previous legitimate sit. The property either does not exist in the context offered, or belongs to someone who has no knowledge their home is being used to attract applicants.

These listings tend to share a few things in common. The property is unusually attractive, a large house in a desirable location with minimal responsibilities and flexible dates. The owner has a backstory that explains why everything must be handled remotely: they are working overseas, they are in a profession that limits their availability, they cannot meet in person. The writing is often slightly generic, pleasant but not specific, the kind of description that could apply to many properties rather than one particular home.

I came across a profile on TrustedHouseSitters that messaged us directly, offering to fly Caro and me to America to look after their dogs for two weeks. The photos were blurry and low quality. Something about the whole thing was just off, a feeling I could not immediately articulate but that I have learned to take seriously. We never applied. The photos alone were enough of a signal. A genuine homeowner with a genuinely attractive property takes decent photos of it.

The defence against fake listings is quick and practical. Run the listing photos through Google Lens or TinEye. If the images appear on a real estate site, a rental platform, or any website unconnected to the person claiming to own the property, you are looking at a fabricated listing. This takes about 60 seconds and is worth doing any time a listing feels even slightly too polished or too good to be true. It is the same instinct you would apply when reviewing a house sitting profile and something in the writing does not quite add up.

Payment Requests: The Clearest Red Flag There Is

The rule here is absolute and has no exceptions: a legitimate homeowner will never ask you for money. Not a security deposit, not a refundable bond, not a contribution toward pet supplies, not a key courier fee, not a cleaning charge, not anything.

House sitting is an exchange of care for accommodation. That is the entire arrangement. The moment any payment request appears, regardless of how small the amount, how reasonable the explanation sounds, or how far into the conversation you are, you are dealing with a scam.

I know this from personal experience, in a way. My first solo sit, in Montanel, France, was arranged before Caro and I were house sitting together. During all the discussions beforehand, there was no mention of any payment. Everything was agreed on verbally. I had flights booked. I was almost at the airport when I found out the homeowner expected £500 per month. It was framed almost casually, as though it had always been part of the arrangement. It had not been.

That experience taught me something important. It is not always a stranger running a deliberate fraud operation. Sometimes it is a homeowner who shifts the terms at the last moment, once they know you are committed and have already invested money in travel. The psychology is the same either way: they are using your sunk costs against you. You have flights booked, alternative accommodation cancelled, plans made around the sit. The thinking goes that you will swallow the cost rather than walk away.

If that ever happens to you, walk away. If I were in that situation today, I would cancel the sit immediately and report it on the platform. I would not proceed even if the homeowner then backed down. Once that dynamic has entered the relationship, going to the house becomes genuinely uncomfortable. You do not know what else might shift once you arrive. If you are ever uncertain about whether something constitutes a breach of the agreement, our guide on what house sitters can and cannot change during a sit gives useful context on where the reasonable boundaries lie.

The same principle applies to any request for payment via irreversible methods: wire transfers, PayPal Friends and Family rather than Goods and Services, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or Zelle. These methods are chosen specifically because they cannot be recovered once sent. If any homeowner requests payment via these channels, do not send anything and report the profile immediately.

Identity and Document Requests

Some scammers are not after a quick payment. They are after your identity documents, which have significantly more long-term value. The approach involves requesting passport scans, copies of a driver's licence, full date of birth, or a selfie holding your ID, framed as a background check or a verification requirement before the sit can be confirmed.

This can feel superficially reasonable. Homeowners do want to know who is coming to stay in their home, which is entirely understandable. But on a reputable platform, that verification is handled through the platform's own processes. Your profile is already linked to your verified identity. A homeowner on THS does not need you to email them a raw passport scan, and a request to do so is not a reasonable extra precaution. It is a red flag.

Be especially cautious if anyone sends you a link to a "verification page" or a third-party form asking for personal details. These pages often mimic legitimate services but exist solely to capture your information. The rule is simple: if the platform you are using has already verified your identity through its own process, any external request for your documents is unnecessary, and you should treat it accordingly.

The consequences of sharing identity documents with the wrong person extend well beyond the sit itself. Identity theft can surface weeks or months after the original contact, long after a listing has disappeared and a profile has been deleted. This is also worth keeping in mind when you think about what personal information is visible in your profile and how you share it. Our article on hidden cameras and your rights during a house sit touches on related privacy concerns that are worth understanding as a sitter.

The Video Call Is Not Optional

Caro and I do a live video call with every homeowner before we confirm any sit. This is the single step in our vetting process I feel most strongly about, and it is the one that most reliably exposes whether a sit is legitimate.

I do not approach these calls as interrogations. I am not working through a checklist of questions about the property. What I am doing is getting a feel for the person I am about to entrust a home to, or whose home I am about to care for. I ask about dates, arrival logistics, the things that genuinely need clarifying. But the most important thing happening on that call is not the information being exchanged. It is the impression being formed.

On my previous house sit in Portugal, the homeowner was noticeably nervous on our video call, a little scattered. My instinct was that something had just happened to put her on edge. It turned out that was simply her personality, anxious and a little all over the place, and that personality was reflected in her dog and the way the whole household ran. The observation from a 20-minute video call was accurate, and it prepared me for what I was arriving into. That kind of preparation is something no listing, however detailed, can give you.

In the context of scams specifically, the video call does something no amount of messaging can replicate: it confirms the person exists, that they match their profile photos, and that they are in a real property. A scammer running a fake listing cannot survive a live call where you ask them to walk you around the house or show you the pets in real time. If you have agreed a sit and there is no welcome guide when you arrive, that is a different problem entirely, and one covered in the guide on what to do when there is no welcome guide. But getting to arrival in the first place requires being confident the sit is real, and the video call is how you get there.

Any homeowner who cannot or will not do a video call is a homeowner I would not confirm with. The reason does not matter. There is always an excuse available if someone wants to avoid a call: bad internet, demanding work schedule, time zone difficulties, privacy concerns. None of these are sufficient reasons to proceed without one. If the sit is real, a legitimate homeowner will find a way to make a call happen.

What Makes a Listing Feel Real

I apply a fairly simple filter when I first look at a listing. Does the writing feel specific to this property and these pets, or does it feel like it could describe any home? Are the photos taken by someone who actually lives there, or do they look like they belong in a magazine or a real estate brochure? Does the pet information feel like it was written by someone who knows this animal, or is it generic in a way that suggests someone filling in a template?

A real homeowner describes their home the way you would describe your own: with the specific, slightly mundane details that only come from actually living somewhere. They know the quirks. They mention the thing that needs fixing. They know exactly what their dog does in the morning and what their cat eats for breakfast. A fabricated listing reads smoothly and attractively, in a way that feels written for an audience rather than for a potential sitter.

The pet descriptions in particular are worth paying attention to. Real homeowners who love their animals write about them with genuine specificity. They mention names, habits, quirks, medical history, the thing the dog does that drives them slightly mad. If you are looking at a listing for a dog sit and the pet section feels thin or interchangeable, that is worth noting. If you have done video calls consistently enough, you will start noticing that the moments where you feel slightly off about a sit are the moments where you are most often right. Our piece on walking a dog in an unfamiliar area illustrates the kind of specific preparation that goes into a real sit, which is a useful contrast to the vagueness of a fake one.

It is also worth looking at how long a profile has existed and whether the reviews, if any, feel genuine. Reviews that are all posted within a very short window, written by accounts with no history of their own, or that read as entirely generic, are a signal worth taking seriously. A real review from a real sitter mentions something specific: the pet's name, a detail about the house, something that happened during the sit. Fabricated reviews do not have that texture.

Paying for a Platform Is Not a Cost, It Is a Filter

I watch a lot of content about online scams, and the pattern that comes up repeatedly is that the highest concentration of fraud is always in the free, low-barrier environments. This is not a coincidence. When the cost of entry is zero and the consequence of getting caught is nothing more than creating a new account, there is very little deterring someone with bad intentions.

A paid platform like TrustedHouseSitters is not just giving you access to listings. It is applying a filter. Someone paying a membership fee and going through ID verification is making a commitment that a fraudster generally will not bother making. If they do make it and then get reported and removed, starting again means another membership fee, another ID check, another profile built from scratch with no reviews. That friction matters more than it might seem.

I have seen people hesitate over the cost of a THS membership, and I understand it on the surface. But the numbers do not support the hesitation. Caro and I have spent roughly $400 in total platform membership costs across three years, against $26,500 in saved accommodation. Even the premium THS tier at $259 per year costs less than two nights in a mid-range hotel in most European cities. If you are using house sitting to travel for weeks or months at a time, the membership pays for itself many times over on the first sit. The full breakdown of what house sitting actually costs compared to conventional travel is in our TrustedHouseSitters pricing guide for 2026.

The membership is not a guarantee of safety. Nothing is. Even on verified platforms you will encounter sits that are misrepresented in ways that are not exactly scams but are still disappointing, a home that is not as clean as the photos suggested, pet behaviour that was not disclosed, a homeowner who returns earlier than expected without much warning. Our guide on what to do if the home is filthy when you arrive covers one of the more common disappointments that sits somewhere between misrepresentation and a genuine scam. And if you are ever sitting a dog with behaviour that was not disclosed upfront, the guide on reactive and aggressive dogs during a house sit is worth reading before you are in that situation.

The platform reduces the risk significantly. It does not eliminate it. That is why the video call, the reverse image search, and the general instinct to trust your gut remain important even when you are using a verified platform.

What to Do If Things Go Wrong Mid-Sit

Scams are not the only way a house sit can go wrong, and it is worth understanding the difference between a situation that requires reporting to a platform and one that requires a different kind of response. If a homeowner has misrepresented the sit in a significant way, that is reportable. If a pet has a medical emergency and you cannot reach the owner, that is a different kind of problem covered in our guide on how to handle a pet emergency when the owner is unreachable. If a pet runs away during your care, the guide on what to do if a pet runs away during a house sit walks through that step by step.

Understanding what falls within your responsibilities and what constitutes a genuine breach by the homeowner is important before you start any sit. Our guide on what house sitters can and cannot change and the piece on cardinal sins to avoid when house sitting together give a clear picture of where the lines are for both parties.

What to Do If You Have Been Scammed

Stop all contact immediately. Do not try to reason with the scammer, recover money through negotiation, or test whether it was all a misunderstanding. It was not. Just stop.

Report the profile to the platform with screenshots of every relevant message, the profile URL, and any contact details the person shared. On a platform like THS, this goes to the member services team. On a Facebook group, flag it to the admins and post a factual warning to the group if you feel comfortable doing so.

If you sent money, contact your bank or payment provider immediately. Wire transfers and gift card payments are almost always unrecoverable. PayPal Goods and Services offers some buyer protection, which is one reason why anyone asking you to use PayPal Friends and Family specifically is a red flag. Act quickly regardless, because some institutions can flag unusual outgoing transfers if contacted fast enough.

If you shared identity documents, place a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus in your country and monitor your accounts closely. In the US that is Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. In Australia it is through IDCARE. Do not wait for obvious fraud to appear before acting, because document misuse can surface long after the original contact.

Report the scam to your local consumer protection authority. In the US that is the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. In the UK it is Action Fraud. In Australia it is Scamwatch. Individual prosecutions are rare, especially when a scammer is operating from another country, but reporting contributes to the pattern recognition that protects others.

Conclusion

The house sitting world is genuinely one of the most trust-based communities I have encountered in years of travel. The overwhelming majority of homeowners and sitters are exactly who they say they are, doing exactly what they say they are doing. Scams exist, but they cluster predictably: in free environments with no verification, in situations where payment requests appear after you have already committed, and in listings where the photos or writing feel slightly too polished to be real.

The protection is not complicated. Use a platform that verifies identity and charges a membership fee. Do a live video call with every homeowner before you confirm. Run listing photos through a reverse image search when your instinct tells you to. Treat any request for money or identity documents as an automatic no, regardless of how the request is framed or how far along the conversation has gone. And pay attention when something feels slightly off, because in my experience, that feeling is right more often than not.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting. If you have questions about house sitting scams or staying safe as a sitter, send us a message on Instagram, we read every DM.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Are house sitting scams common on TrustedHouseSitters?

  They are uncommon compared to free platforms. THS requires ID verification and charges a membership fee, which filters out most bad actors. Someone who gets reported and removed has to go through that entire process again to start over. That friction is meaningful. It does not make THS scam-proof, but it makes it significantly safer than any free or unmoderated environment.

• What should I do if a homeowner asks me for a deposit or fee?

  Decline immediately, do not send anything, and report the profile to the platform with screenshots of the request. This applies even if the amount is small and the explanation sounds plausible. No legitimate sit involves a payment from sitter to homeowner. If the homeowner backs down after you push back, I would still not proceed. The dynamic has already been introduced and the sit will be uncomfortable from that point on.

• Is it safe to find house sits through Facebook groups?

  It is higher risk than using a paid platform. Facebook groups have no identity verification, no review system tied to real interactions, and no meaningful enforcement. Most people posting in them are genuine, but the barrier to entry for scammers is zero. If you use Facebook groups, apply more rigorous vetting than you would on THS, not less. Always insist on a live video call and never send money or documents to anyone you have only connected with through Facebook.

• How do I know if a listing is fake?

  Run the listing photos through Google Lens or TinEye. If they appear on a real estate site, a rental platform, or any site unconnected to the person claiming to own the property, the listing is fake. Beyond that, look for writing that is generic rather than specific to a real home, and an owner whose backstory conveniently explains why they cannot meet, video call, or show you the property in real time.

• Should I ever send my passport to a homeowner?

  No. On a reputable platform your identity has already been verified through the platform's own process. A homeowner does not need a raw document from you directly. If someone requests a passport scan outside of the platform's official verification system, treat it as a red flag, do not send anything, and consider reporting the profile.

• What is the most reliable way to verify a sit is legitimate?

  A live video call where the homeowner shows you around the actual property in real time. Fake listings, stolen identities, and non-existent properties all collapse the moment you insist on seeing the person, the space, and the pets live. Any homeowner who refuses to do this, or who gives repeated excuses for why they cannot, is not a homeowner you should confirm with.

• Can a house sitter be a scammer too?

  Yes, and homeowners should be aware of this. From the homeowner's side, risks include sitters who misrepresent themselves, cause damage, or behave badly. This is why two-way verification and a real review system matter. Our guide on how to do a proper house sit checkout covers what leaving a home correctly looks like, which is the foundation of a trustworthy sitter profile.

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