True Confessions of a Maine House Sitter
The Pine Tree State has long been a hotbed of house sitters. Here are a few of their stories.
By Joshua F. Moore, photography by Benjamin Magro
J.P. Fecteau thought he'd seen everything. In fifteen years of house-sitting, he'd watched failing furnaces belch smoke into family homes, seen pets suddenly step to death's door while their owners were overseas, and witnessed virtually every manner of mayhem Mother Nature could throw at a house. But he wasn't prepared for what one homeowner left him last December."I was about to start minding this house in Lincolnville, and the owner called me and said that there was a prisoner on the loose nearby," Fecteau recalls. "They told me to lock the house, but, of course, I didn't have a key yet so they said they'd just leave the door open until I got there. Well, I walked in, and on the bed where I was supposed to sleep there was a pistol with a box of bullets. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do with that, but fortunately the guy was apprehended that same day."
Most of the stories told by Maine house sitters aren't so suspenseful. But the drama that unfolds when a newcomer moves into someone's private sanctuary can be every bit as intense. With the highest percentage of second homes in the country -- Maine Revenue Services reports that 19 percent of the Pine Tree State's residential value is owned by out-of-staters -- Maine has been fertile ground for house sitters for decades. Some homeowners appreciate having a person living in their Maine house just to make sure the pipes don't burst in winter, while others need someone to keep the African violets watered and to make sure Spot gets his evening constitutional for a week or two. Others want to keep their home lived in during a stint abroad with the Peace Corps.
Some house sitters, particularly long-term ones and those in need of economical housing, will trade a few chores and the utility bills for their stay. (Unless you can convince a friend or relative to mind your house for a week or so, homeowners should expect to pay a fee for short-term house sitters.) Though the high demand for housing in certain areas of the state, such as York County, makes house-sitting largely unnecessary there even in the off-season, responsible Mainers can still find themselves living rent-free in some of the state's toniest resort communities.
"I've been house-sitting for about ten years, and I've only lived in two places," explains one Boothbay-area house sitter who spent six years at his last assignment, an oceanfront estate. "The reasoning at first was that I'd have to move out during the summertime, but it never happened. The owner's wife had a stroke just before I was set to move out, and he told me to stay right there if I wanted. So I was forced to look out over the ocean every day." Such plum locations can sometimes be found through newspaper advertisements, though most house sitters say word of mouth is the best means of finding a situation that works for both parties.
Even when the location is stunning and the accommodations plush, however, house-sitting is not for everyone. Heather Bruce, for instance, minded a friend's house while she was renovating her own Camden home -- "I was kind of homeless, so it worked out quite well," she says -- but admits that she never felt at ease in a house that was not hers. "I never felt like it was home," she says. "I looked at it more that I was taking care of their house. I still felt like I was living out of a bag." Others don't care for the flooded basements, intermittent power outages, and rodent encounters that often punctuate a house sitter's journey through the seasons.
First-time house sitter and Portland resident Jeannemarie Celentano shared Bruce's initial misgivings when she donated her house-sitting services last March as part of a fund-raiser at the Waynflete School in Portland. But she says those concerns disappeared as she developed a relationship with the homeowners. "It was really nerve-wracking at first," she says. "My girlfriend, Hope, and I have never lived with cats before, and the people we house-sat for had a dozen chickens, three cats, and a dog. When we first walked into the house, the three cats sort of stood on one end of the room and we stood on the other and we stared at each other and wondered what to do." The second day wasn't much better: the homeowners' chocolate Lab decided to put a paw through a screen door. Despite such stumbling blocks, Celentano says she has grown to enjoy her brief spells -- six times in just the past year -- spent minding the couple's North Yarmouth colonial, with its wide-pine floors and fireplace in every room. "It's fun to wake up in the morning and go feed the chickens and get the eggs," she says. "It certainly has its romance."
For people like J.P. Fecteau, who owns his own home in Camden yet still spends several weeks at a time living in other people's residences, house-sitting is less about romance and more about making sure the arrangement works for everyone involved. "I don't have a family so I'm a pretty mobile guy, and a lot of people like me because I'm middle-aged and not prone to big parties," Fecteau explains. "But I do have a dog, a little sheltie, so it's a prerequisite that my dog gets along with other dogs." Once that relationship is established, though, Fecteau says he often finds himself treated like a member of the homeowner's family. (One owner actually called him from vacation to tell him where an ironing board was located, oblivious to the fact that Fecteau hasn't pressed his clothes in years.)
Preserving the relationship also means respecting a homeowner's privacy, and a house sitter shouldn't make himself too at home, Fecteau says. "Typically what I do is make my own space," he remarks. "I'm not a snoopy person, and I'm not going to go digging through their drawers. I usually set up the room where I'm going to sleep, and then use the kitchen and wherever the TV is located. It's really about respecting people's most prized possession, yet living in it."
These days, fewer homeowners are requesting the services of house sitters during long-term absences, as a combination of pressure within the local housing market, more modernized houses, and even technological advances have made house sitters less vital to an old home's long-term survival. "It's very different than it was even ten years ago," explains Audrey Miller, a property manager in Boothbay. Miller says that while in years past seasonal residents might prefer to have someone living in their drafty old Victorian, most of those homes have since been insulated and remodeled. Such upgrades allow a homeowner to simply turn down the furnace and type in a security code before heading out of town for months. They also allow out-of-state owners to use their homes at a moment's notice as a winter getaway or a holiday retreat. "House-sitting used to go on quite a bit around here, but we've seen a real drop in the last couple of years," Miller says. "The amount of upgrading that has gone on has really changed the area." In places like Mount Desert Island, rental agents say most homeowners prefer to rent out their homes rather than have someone house-sit during the off-season.
"I tend to get a few calls from people looking to house-sit, but I don't get owners looking for that," says Joe Wright, with L.S. Robinson Real Estate and Rentals in Southwest Harbor. "In the winter the rentals are fairly inexpensive; I have a little two-bedroom right on the water in Southwest Harbor that rents for six hundred dollars a month."
As the need for house sitters has declined in recent years, Miller and others have seen their caretaking business grow, with homeowners contracting to have someone periodically check that their new furnace has not unexpectedly died or a birch tree has not dropped a limb onto the sunporch. Technology has made caretaking even easier, with devices now available that will turn on a bedroom light if a pipe should burst or the inside temperature drops precipitously. Such advancements allow a caretaker to monitor a home without even entering it.
But for those homeowners who prefer to leave their Maine homes (and oftentimes their pets and plants, as well) in the hands of a person instead of a machine, house sitters continue to be an attractive alternative. There will always be mishaps -- Fecteau says he'll never forget the Christmas when he broke in half the prized tortoise-shell salad tongs that a homeowner had given to his wife just a few hours earlier -- but the homeowner-house sitter relationship is usually strong enough to overcome them. "I've had my dog scratch some paint on a window or something, but if you're honest about it most people are very understanding and know that it kind of goes along with the territory," Fecteau says.
What can be most unexpected for house sitters, of course, are the surprises that homeowners themselves can leave behind, whether it's in the form of a pistol or the different lifestyles that some homeowners expect their fill-ins to slip right into. "The last person I house-sat for was showing me around the house -- it had about four bedrooms -- and he shows me the master bedroom and says 'You should sleep here, so that all four of the dogs can sleep with you,' " Fecteau laughs. "I wasn't quite ready for that."
