House minding pre-requisites?

Obskure

Hi.
New to this section but I wanted a second opinion on an offer that my wife just received.
Basically, She has been asked by a couple to mind their house for up to the next 4 years. They are moving to Australia on a trial basis(new job) but are retaining the house just in case it doesn't work out.
The background goes like this:- the couple are not friends of ours; merely acquaintances. They know that my wife does a bit of house cleaning and used to run her own business(pre-recession). Therefore she is conscientious, hard-working, and responsible(their words).
She has just been provided with a list as long as my arm, but that isn't the problem. It's knowing how much to charge and making sure that she is not held responsible for theft or property damage outside of her prescribed duties. These duties include paying the bills, general upkeep of the house & grounds, moving the cars about, scanning the mail to e-mail onwards etc.
We have discussed the figures this side but I want to know what you folk think? Please bare in mind that we are in Mayo & as such, services like this are not as common-place as perhaps in the East of the country.
Thanks for reading!

the_syco

Is there any reason why they're not just renting the house out?

Obskure

One simple reason: they don't feel like they could handle someone living in their home. They are afraid that the move won't work out. Plus, they earn a good wage & don't need the income to cover payments.

OS119

i'd base it on two factors - what do they want her to be responsible for (ie: if something goes wrong, the place gets burgled etc how much of that is her problem?), and how much time is this going to take up (will they want the cars moved every other day, curtains open and closed every day, lights on at night, mail forwarded every day etc)...?

is doing this job to the standard these people want (and given that they seem to want it to look like they're still living there, i can't see it being otherwise) going to mean that your wife couldn't take on another job, or that you couldn't take holidays?

personally - unless they live next door and the money was sufficient that it meant it was almost a full-time job - i wouldn't bother, it sounds like a nightmare, and a fairly illogical one at that.