Rent out your car

[Brigitte1076]

Hi everyone, 

I am an occasional host on AirBnb and it works pretty well for me, it's fun and I enjoy having a little additional income. I am based in the UK and the property that I have rented is in London. 

During Covid I tried renting out my car briefly but then various life events meant that I had to stop. Now I am thinking of picking it up again more seriously. Has anyone here has experience of renting their car in the UK or elsewhere? I believe that some people have 10 or 20 cars on some of the platforms, and make a pretty good living that way. It would be great to hear from someone experienced about what it's really like, and if it works. Maybe someone does this in tandem with their airbnb rental, so that guests can have a car if they need. 

Thanks everyone,

Brigitte

[Annie1372]

@Brigitte1076 

With a regular car insurance, I don’t think this is possible. And I’m sure that special car insurance for that would be very expensive and they must restrict only to newer car

[Byron54]

Hi @Brigitte1076 , i used to rent two of my cars during the pandemic as well, and it did pretty well as an additional income, after all, that's what travel agencies do, book the flight, hotel and a car if the client accepts. Airbnb brings a lot of opportunities for us to rent not only cars, but bikes, kayaks and ATVS (in my case) and everything we can make an additional income with, is welcome! Lucky for me, my country isn't that strict with the laws as the UK, so we dabble with anything we can to an extent.

[Sudsrung0]

We have done it in the past but it turned in to a bit of a nightmare dont forget you are liable 24/7 we even had a couple of scooters for rent, we got rid of them.

What we do now we still offer car rent but we use a local company were we get paid commission they are liable for that car, Im not getting mad phone calls in the middle of the night, Lost keys and things like that.

We have guest now who wanted a car for 25 days I take him down to their office, he signs their papers pays them, thats it done.

For us there are many ways to produce extra income, One of the favourites here is boat trips to the other islands we get paid 30% commission from them, The guest love it because they get picked up from our properties and brought back,

Hey even the hospitals pay commission here hahahaha,

I have a list of local restaurants that I recommend then I get a big discount when I send customers my husband gets a couple of Free beers.