Hiring a car v buying a car

I guess it depends if you're a 'head' or 'heart' decision maker?

The 'heart' says - I like to own my car, I know it, I look after it and I enjoy driving it, I chose it for it's practicality / style / performance / colour.

The 'head' says - what's the best convenience / cost way to have access to a car when I'm at my holiday home?

Renting - A lot depends on what you want from the car. Most competitively priced rentals are for small hatchbacks, which may or may not suit. You can usually rent for less than £5 per day in the low seasons (I've paid as little as £2 per day between November & February for a small hatchback), but maybe £15 a day in the high seasons, so £150 - £450 per month, which is a big variation. You can usually rent for a maximum of 28 days at a time, at which point the car rental company want to check the car or exchange it for another, which is really only a minor inconvenience. These costs, obviously, include your insurance, road tax, maintenance, etc. - all you need to add is fuel.

Owning - If you buy a car, you will probably want to leave it with one of the airport parking companies (e.g. planeparking.com), who will store your car for as little as £50 per month if you have a long-term contract with them and collect / drop it at the airport for you when you leave & arrive. So, if for example, you spend 6 months here, then you'll spend £300. However, your car may be sitting idle for months on end, possibly in the baking sun, which won't be good for it. You then also have the usual costs of owning a car - insurance (say, £300pa), road tax (£100pa), annual service (£300), maintenance, tyres, depreciation, etc. etc.

Ownership (excluding depreciation) - £1,200pa

Car Hire - (4 months low season, 2 months high season) - £1,500pa

The other thing to consider is that the used car market is a lot smaller than in the UK, so there is less choice and prices are higher than in the UK. This is mainly due to 2 reasons - firstly, company cars are uncommon in Spain, so there are few ex-fleet cars filtering into the used car market; and secondly, families tend to pass cars on to family members and run a car into the ground.

In my personal opinion, I would rent unless I lived here full-time - but that's just my opinion...

Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for your advice. So helpful and covered everything that we agonised about. So looking forward to finally getting out to Spain. When we bought our house the owners left a couple of bikes so that will be good for us too. Thanks again. Really appreciate it. 

No worries!

We're in a similar situation - we bought in November last year, but haven't been able to get over since February - although we've now got flights booked for mid-July. Even more infuriating when it's raining here and 34'C & bright sunshine there!

Hi

I think RichT has given you great advice. I did the sums too, purely on financial basis (Including depreciation of course) you need to virtually live there to make owning a car the best option. Some very good car hire deals out there, we use Centauro with our own annual excess insurance for £40/year, (never use Goldcar!). We will be out again next week and looking forward to hiring a little fiat 500, fun!

Brian

I know. It is frustrating. We did have sun in Glasgow but gone now. Have fun in the sun.

Thank you for your input. Have heard so many bad reports about Goldcar so would never use them. Will definitely go down the rental route. Makes sense. Happy days.

Hi Guys, We are out to our place on July 13th in Fortuna, Were car dealers back here in the UK, I have a spare Car , Mercedes E280 think its a 57 plate from memory. at our place there. Not sure what to do with it as we have another car there aswell. Was trying to decide either to pop it through Lumsdens auction out there or rent it out or sell it or bring it back to the UK and sell it on the forecourt.  Might be something for you? 

Simon.