MindMyHouse News 8 March 2020
Hello again to all our global house sitters, from our little island of Waiheke. Apologies that we haven’t written for a while! We been super busy on working on some new improvements to MindMyHouse, and also trying to get our own house built.
Smoke from Australia
Wondering about the image above? Yes, it’s pretty scary. This was the scene that we woke up to on 5th January on Waiheke Island (just outside Auckland, New Zealand, where we are based) and it felt like being on Mars. A huge swath of smoke had drifted across the Tasman Sea (popularly termed ‘The Ditch” to the locals) all the way from Australia to New Zealand. Apparently it went all way around the world and you could see it clearly on the satellite views. Pretty scary stuff!
New improvements on the way for MindMyHouse
Apart from looking up at the sky, we’ve also been busy walking our dog, and building the next round of new features for the MindMyHouse website. It had been part of the plan that the new version of MindMyHouse (version 3) was supposed to included these particular features, but alas the job was too big for us and we had to put it back. Hopefully, we will be able to release these new features very soon. We just need to polish them up a bit more.
New feature for house sitters: My Assignments
House sitters: ever wondered which house sitting assignments you were selected for? Or wanted to know which ones you applied for? Wonder no more. We will be adding a whole new section called ‘My Assignments’. This will display:
- My assignments coming up (the ones I was selected for)
- Home owners I contacted or assignments I applied for
- My completed assignments
Also, we will be improving the way that home owners inform house sitters about the status of their applications. Previously, it was all a bit ad hock and not all home owners were up to the task of informing house sitters whether they were successful or not (an ongoing pain point for many of you). Hopefully, all going to plan, you’ll be able to see the status of your pending application for a house sitting assignment. Also, when the home owner ‘chooses’ a house sitter, all unsuccessful applicants will be emailed automatically. No more waiting around :).
I think it’s fair to say that based on the feedback that we have received from you, our wonderful members, this was the number one requested feature (by house sitters).
More importantly, this will hopefully bring us in line with some of our competitors whom have had this feature for some time. We’ll send out an email to all house sitters when we release it (soon) explaining how it works.
New features for home owners: My Sitters
Home owners: ever wanted to see a list of all house sitters who applied to look after your home? Or wanted to see who sat for you in the past? Wonder no more. We will be adding a whole new section called ‘My Sitters’. This will display:
- My current selected house sitter
- All current applicants
- My Previous house sitters
- Previous applicants
Also, we will be improving the way that you, as the home owner, select a house sitter and let all the other applicants know that they were unsuccessful. And you’ll be able to do it all in one go! This is something that probably took you ages to do in the past. So we’ve tried our best to be automate this process for you, in order to save you time and hassle. That’s why it took us so long to build : )
More importantly, this will hopefully bring us in line with some of our competitors whom have had this feature for some time. We’ll send out an email to all home owners when we release it (soon) explaining how it works.
Coronovirus Update – 16 March 2020
With travel bans popping up everywhere, we have prepared two special guides about local house sitting: one for home owners and one for house sitters.
We hope you enjoy!
Posted in: MindMyHouse News
