The viability of pet sitting?

[TopHatFox]

Let's say you wanted to make $300/mo for taking care of someone else's pet inside your home. You can still do all the things you usually do, but just remember to feed, water, and pet a little furry creature every now and again. Is this viable?

Because if it is, I think I just discovered another key strategy of the instant ERE puzzle

Can you think of any other passive strategies for capitalizing space? I thought about renting space for storage, but that doesn't pay much.

----------------------

Quick Search: "Average pet sitting prices. In 2013, Angie's List members reported paying an average of $37 a day, with a general range of $25 to $50, for daily pet sitting. CostHelper.com says that overnight stays can cost between $50 and $75 per night." Now for how to get started...

[slowtraveler]

Sounds more like semi ere due to the reliance on continued personal labor input.

Don't forget to put boots and a matching jacket on the cute puppy 8 times a day for its hourly walks. And it has to be letter from head to tail softly, just like this.

[TopHatFox]

hahahah, how fun. Yeah, definitely semi-ERE. You can probably just say no to the over-ly demanding clients, or ask them to pay more.

[jacob]

It's viable but maybe not in the sense you envision it. A pet is not a houseplant. Well, most aren't.

We've used two different pet sitters like that. Both specialized in pugs. Fun fact: A group of pugs is called a grumble. So one had a grumble of 13 pugs running all over the back yard and about 1/4 of the house. The other had about 5 with a similar configuration. Most of them were day-to-day, but a few of them were actually boarded for many months at a time (e.g. for people who get stationed off-shore)

Both of them were stay-at-home operators (one married with children, one single) who made a living from it. $100-300/day is not bad. One of them made very sure to explain how she would have to leave the house for "just one hour" (I think it was for a haircut) on a specific day in case we showed up to collect our dog at that time, but would otherwise be around all day. Expect to be tied to your house. It's one thing to leave a dog in your own home when the dog is familiar with the place. It's quite another to leave a random pet alone in alien territory where they might freak out and mess up whatever they can get their teeth into (furniture, bags, plants, ...). Also, similar to humans, not all pets take well to being put in a crate for the duration.

I did not inquire into business licenses, financial details, or insurance. I don't recall any of them asking what to do in case of an emergency. Lets say the dog falls and is now lame on a few legs. You call the owner, but they don't answer. What now? Or lets say you take Killer for a walk and Killer snaps the neck of Fluffy? My guess is that they hadn't really thought about it. We didn't really either. I think most people just use a strategy of ignorance or hope presuming such incidences will all work out which they probably do in most cases.

[James_0011]

@THF

Buy a house, live in the basement or garage, and rent the other rooms out.

I’m working on this right now. I live in Philly, and there are a ton of multi family homes around. I plan on buying one, renting out the top floor unit, living in the basement, and renting out the other rooms in the first floor unit.

The beauty of this is that since you’re living in the house, you can get owner occupied financing which is a very low down payment.

Then, after you’ve been in the house for a year, you can refinance the mortgage for something conventional, then move out and rent the space you were living in.

I’m surprised so many people on here use index funds, when it’s WAY faster to retire on real estate.

I also like fixing/building things so this would be fun for me.

[theanimal]

I housesit/pet sit for friends in my area on a somewhat regular basis. In fact I'm doing it as we type. There's no way I would do this long term involving pets. Pets are an anchor, constantly requiring care and attention. If you really like animals, maybe this will work for you but I don't see how this matches up with what you want to do long term.

[TopHatFox]

More of a short-term solution

[jennypenny]

I'd go with dog walking over pet sitting. Less of a time commitment and you get exercise as well as $$.

[C40]

My cousin is a big pet sitter. I think it is their (her and her husband's) main source of income.

I'd also say that walking may be a better gig. If you're watching 5+ dogs, it's going to take frequent attention on your part, and unless you really really love dogs, it's going to get annoying. My cousin is literally crazy about dogs, so she loves it. After living for one week in a house in the northern U.S. during winter with a big dog who doesn't have a big yard to run in, I can totally see why/that a lot of people would pay to have their dog walked every day. So once you get a regular set of customers, it could be pretty easy going. Whereas with sitting, you're generally doing it just when people are out of town, and having to continually deal with new people and new dog.

When I was expecting to hang out in Santa Barbara for a month or so, I signed up for Rover (it's an app) which connects sitters/walkers with pet owners. Seems pretty decent. You'd have to figure out how to ~game the system in order to get high search engine placement and such. Probably need to start out with a bang by already having references and a bunch of pictures of you with dogs.

Edit - I think it's possible for you to just solve the ERE puzzle without really needing a career. By doing things like:
- Buy the right house with two or three extra bedrooms and rent them out. (or, alternatively, live in some old person's carriage house apartment for free in exchange for lawn maintenance and them just having a young man around)
- Walk 5-10 dogs per day.
- Buy/sell some things that you're interested in (Ego from here is a great example of doing this successfully, though he is a master at social capital and making friends with the right people (suppliers of 'stuff'))
- Mow 5-10 lawns per week and/or shovel snow.

[Did]

@jacob Off topic, but do consider having the pet sitter come to you, for free, if you want a holiday.

[jacob]

@Did - This was years ago when we lived in the RV.

[TopHatFox]

This is precisely my thought. The portfolio exists because there are expenses. Removing the housing cost by buying and renting rooms and getting food and fun money with pet sitting/walking means my current portfolio can support me. There is significant localized risk in buying a house though.

I was thinking more along the lines of rent out half my room with someone I really like, and then dog sit a dog I like to pay for my half of the room and food. Community and freedom-ish. Ta da~

[TopHatFox]

OK cool, so dog walking is in. I'll check out Rover.

What else? Got any apps for tutoring/any other ideas?

[EdithKeeler]

I boarded my dogs a good bit last year. I paid about &40 a day for “doggie day care,” where the dogs have specific area to run around in (based on dog size), a swimming pool, a bath and grooming at the end of their stay, etc. I would not pay that kind of money to leave them in ssomeone’s house.

Now, I would pay to have someone come to my house, walk and feed and play with the dogs, turn on lights, get the mail, etc. I’d want the person to be bonded. (This is also my plan for my “retirement job” to earn some cash when I quit my job). My mom did this when she retired, for a handful of people, and they paid well. She’d do extra things like make sure there were fresh milk and eggs and bread in the house when they got back )they’d leave a list), stuff like that. Made her a decent amount of coin.

[EdithKeeler]

I’m surprised so many people on here use index funds, when it’s WAY faster to retire on real estate.

Real estate is great except when it’s not. My BF owns a 12 unit apartment building and several rental homes. He makes decent money, but there is always something that needs to be done maintenance-wise (lately it’s new windows in some houses) and while his tenants are mostly long term and good, every so often something bad or weird happens. Then there are bonus things like the guy who shot himself in the head in one apartment and the guy cooking meth in another.

I have 1 rental and a professional manager, and that’s as much hassle as I want. And I’m not exactly getting rich on it.

[James_0011]

It sounds like the problem is your boyfriends ability to analyze real estate and screen tenants, not the real estate itself.

A lot of people who invest in real estate do little to no research before they do so and it usually doesn’t work out for them.

Apartments are not very easy to deal with.

I’m not sure if you’re in the USA, but one of the great things about living here is that we have school districts that create solid boundaries between people who cook meth and wholesome families.

Comparing cheap apartments to a single family home in a top school district is apples to oranges.

It like saying day trading single stocks is equivalent to buying and holding low cost index funds.

John Schaub who is a famous real estate investor has had to evict a totally of six tenants in a twenty year investing career. He only buys single family homes in top neighborhoods.

[Riggerjack]

Uh huh. Maybe in fully developed eastern cities school boundaries are that solid, I don't know. Out west, not so much. And rentals don't happen in top tier nieghborhoods. I have a few SFR rentals, and while the tenants are different from apt tenants, the variability exceeds the difference.

Out here, you better have a better plan than buying in a good school district, and screening aggressively.

As to RE vs passive investments, that is apples and oranges. RE is not passive, or more to the point, passive RE is speculation. RE is a job, with irregular hours, and it doesn't pay for ages, but then pays well.

Rather than reading RE gurus, I would recommend mikeBOS' blog, "lacking ambition", or, if you want to go bigger than SF residential, John t Reed.

[7Wannabe5]

I would note that although owner-occupied rental and not-owner-occupied rental are both part-time jobs as well as sources of investment income, they vary fairly significantly in both regards. I am easy-going, fairly social, don't need a good deal of privacy or personal space, fairly handy, and I prefer a flexible situation, so I would strongly consider owner-occupied as an option, but I would prefer a good many other investment options to non-owner occupied real estate.

IOW, based on my experience, if you are the sort of person who might be found happily chatting with a housemate over coffee while you fix the kitchen sink in your pajamas, then owner-occupied might work for you. OTOH, if you are the sort of person who doesn't mind taking the trailer out of storage, hitching the trailer to the truck, loading the riding mower on to the trailer, stopping at the appliance store to see if they have any hot water heaters on clearance, mowing the lawn, typing up the official letter notifying tenant of intent to evict, being sued for improper abatement of black mold, getting up in the middle of the night in January and driving your truck to your rental unit to deal with a flood because there were no water heaters on clearance last month, etc. etc. etc. then non-owner occupied multiple-units might be your cup of tea.

[Gilberto de Piento]

At one point I was interested in investing in single family rentals or duplexes but I couldn't find any where the numbers worked. People who were able to move fast on the deals during the recession set themselves up well but right now it doesn't seem feasible in my location. Some investors go to other locations to buy but it seemed like a bridge too far for me.

I've petsat/housesat. It is ok but definitely an anchor in the same way that having a pet of your own is. I also felt bad when things didn't go well - one dog kept urinating on the floor when no one was home, another dog got so stressed that the owner wasn't around that it couldn't keep food down, etc. It wasn't for me.

[EdithKeeler]

It sounds like the problem is your boyfriends ability to analyze real estate and screen tenants, not the real estate itself.

A lot of people who invest in real estate do little to no research before they do so and it usually doesn’t work out for them.

Apartments are not very easy to deal with.

I’m not sure if you’re in the USA, but one of the great things about living here is that we have school districts that create solid boundaries between people who cook meth and wholesome families.

Comparing cheap apartments to a single family home in a top school district is apples to oranges.

Ok—check back with me after you e bought at least one house and rented it out for 4 or 5 years. Let me know if everything went according to plan. BF’s been doing it for 20 years or so, in addition to his other job as a lawyer.

Real estate has pluses and minuses, and while you can mitigate some risks, you can’t eliminate them entirely. You buy a rental in a better (usually more expensive) school district, more of your own money is tied up in the property, plus better areas often have backlash against rentals. And—how many people want to rent in more expensive areas? If they can afford high rent, they can afford to buy, otherwise they may be shorter turnover renters (ie, in town for a year or 2 for a job), and turnover is expensive for a landlord. And trust me, ain’t no guarantee someone won’t cook meth or kill them self in a good school district....
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/5077131.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnew ... an-n731871


Why do people invest in index funds over real estate? Because my index fund won’t need a new roof, won’t be trashed by a tenant, isn’t subject to neighborhood changes, neighbors, etc. and I can sell my index fund in a day.

Like I said, I have a single rental and it’s worked out ok so far, but I’m realistic about it. Rentals CAN BE a good source of cash flow, and they can make money, but I think home runs are actually pretty rare.