Looking to find an agency or agencies in the Bay area that screen
applicants to stay in a home while the owner is away and/or abroad for
several months.  The home is located in the Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los
Altos Hills, Atherton, Menlo Park area.
Can you help me find any of these agencies or tell me the best way to
locate  people who are working and responsible?   I am not looking to
have a lot of people contact me but I am looking for the resources of
where I could best look for them.  If I have not placed this in the
best
category, could you please move it to a better place.  Thank you

Hi schmooz!

This is certainly an interesting request. :-) 

I was able to find quiet a lot of information on house sitters/sitting
in your area. However, much of the information available was geared
towards:

* looking after pets
* looking after kids 

Since you did not mention that either of these were the case, I weeded
these ones out. What was left were some good opportunities for you to
look at. Of course, you need to scan through them yourself, since YOU
have to be comfortable with the "stranger" who will be watching your
house for you.

The following was what I was able to find. 
 

1. Worldwide Housesitting

URL: http://www.housesitworld.com/

This site allows people looking for a house sitter and people looking
to house sit to post requests and find each other. There doesn't
appear to be any screening or bonding of the potential sitters, but
they do have to provide some detailed personal information and you're
free to browse and pick from them yourself.

To do a search on your area, go to 

http://www.housesitworld.com/usa/index.html

and put the city name in the search box about a third of the way down
the page.

I searched on each of the city names you provided and found the
following two possibilities:

Suzanne Tiendas
http://www.housesitworld.com/usa/usa327.htm
Contact e-mail: stiendas@yahoo.com
Contact Phone: 408-431-8931 (USA)

Leslie Joan Altman 
http://www.housesitworld.com/usa/usa360.htm
Contact e-mail: laltman@hawken.edu
Contact Phone: 440-423-0445

As well, you can post your specific need at: 

http://www.housesitworld.com/sitterwanted.htm

However, that would mean you'd need to give out your email address -
so you might get a number of people contacting you directly.


2. HouseCarers.com

URL: http://www.housecarers.com/

This site seems to do more to protect your "privacy" - by acting as a
communication intermediary.

The following page:

http://www.housecarers.com/search_2.cfm

allows you to search for sitters available in a particular area.
Choose "United States" for the Country, "California" for the State,
and then your particular cities (one at a time). Clicking "Search"
will come up with a rather long list of possible sitters, with
"detail" links to biographical information.

There were too many possibilities for me to go through them all.
Besides, you know best what type of person you want. :-)

This site also has the possibility for placing a sitter want ad (which
can be found off the main page), as well as a wealth of other
information about the whole house sitting industry.

3. Classified Ads:

I was able to find some people in the classified ads of local
papers/websites. However, there is little biographical detail about
these people provided. I would use these as a last resort.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/paw/paonline/classifieds/current/861.shtml

http://www.craigslist.org/sfo/sfc/sbw/5877926.html

http://www.craigslist.org/sfo/nby/sbw/5833518.html

http://www.bay-area-sitters.com/house/housitlist.php3

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990423/class.shtml#TOCRef22


I hope this has been of help. If I have missed the mark, please let me
know through the Clarification feature.

Thanks. 

websearcher-ga


Search Strategy:

"house sitting" OR "home sitting" 
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+OR+%22home+sitting%22+

"house sitting" "Palo Alto"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+%22Palo+Alto%22

"house sitting" "Menlo Park"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+%22Menlo+Park%22

"house sitting" "Los Altos"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+%22Los+Altos%22

"house sitting" "Atherton"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+%22Atherton%22

"house sitting" agency california
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22house+sitting%22+agency+california

---

Request for Answer Clarification by schmooz-ga on 30 Sep 2002 12:38 PDT

I am looking for an agencies that are a clearinghouse for applicants
not a database of applicants.  Just as you thought, I want the
agencies to do the check on the applicants and then refer them to me
already pre-screened.  I hope this helps clarify what I am looking
for.

---

Clarification of Answer by websearcher-ga on 30 Sep 2002 15:10 PDT

Hi schmooz:

Thank you for the clarification request. 

I spent another hour searching for agencies that pre-screen
house-sitters, but was absolutely unable to find anything promising in
your area with a Web presence.

The next best thing, I thought, was to use the Yellow Pages for areas
around you. I went to Yahoo! Yellow Pages at

http://yp.yahoo.com/

and found a category called "House Sitter Services". When I searched
in "Palo Alto" in this category, I got:

http://yp.yahoo.com/py/ypResults.py?Pyt=Typ&stp=s&stx=729904.Y&tab=B2C&city=Palo+Alto&state=CA&country=us&msa=7400&slt=37.442051&sln=-122.141434&cs=4

This showed 20 companies within 100 miles. I tried to find websites
for these companies, but they don't appear to be on the Web.

I would suggest contacting some of the closest ones that don't mention
pets in their titles, such as

* "Next Door Neighbor" (650) 854-4984, 
* "Home Sitting Svc Of The Bay" (510) 582-8967, 
* "Home Sitting Services-Bay Area" (510) 236-4764, and 
* "Mary Dale Svc" (707) 546-8230.  
 
I am very sorry I wasn't able to find something more specific for you
despite my best efforts. I would have thought this type of service
would be abundant on the Web. Most of the agencies I found that had
the type of services you wanted were in the UK.

Please feel free to rate this answer accordingly. 

Thanks.

websearcher-ga

Thanks for your hard work and follow-up.  This is a difficult one.

As a long-term house sitter I wonder why you feel you would rather
rely on an agency to screen your house sitter for you rather than do
it yourself. I've just joined a great house sitting website called
MindMyHouse.com. House sitters post their own information onto the
site so the site owners cannot vouch for their reliability. But it is
very clear from the FAQs and various information in the site's Advice
Centre that only those house sitters who can provide references, a
security deposit, a recent police clearance check and who sign a house
sitting agreement will get the job!