Can I "loan" my car out for 5 months, and be legally covered?

March 11, 2015 7:41 PM

My situation: I bought a car to replace my stolen scooter about a year ago, and just got my scooter back. Til the end of summer, I imagine I'll be riding the scoot exclusively. In lieu of selling my car and purchasing another in a few months- which I'd have to do in 8-month-rainy-season Seattle- I'd like to figure out a way to let someone use/insure/park it til then, and be legally assured that I would get the car back in the same condition I left it. More inside.

I live in downtown Seattle, where meter rates are highest in the nation. Public (lot) parking can be had, if you're willing to shell out $2-350/month- and I'm not. If I were to draft a contract, stating that any damages would be paid for, and said contract would hold up in court- loaning it out seems like the route to take. Has anyone done something like this before?

posted by t(h)om(as) to Law & Government (11 answers total)

You could look into peer-to-peer car sharing. See: http://www.carsharing.net/
An example here: https://relayrides.com/how-it-works
posted by Toddles at 7:52 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Awesome! That's perfect! Thanks for the tip!
posted by t(h)om(as) at 8:01 PM on March 11, 2015

and be legally assured that I would get the car back in the same condition I left it.

A word of caution - this is impossible as you present it. You can perhaps legally dictate a reasonable level of return in terms of serviceability (ie reliable and running/passes safety) but a 5 month period is a *lot* in the life of a car. It is impossible it would be in the *same* condition that you left it. Everything will be '5 months+ the mileage travelled' closer to failing for service items, for instance.

I'd be very surprised if you could do this with anything other than a brand new car. Who would pay for the failures during the period of rental/loan? What about the servicing? What about repairs (tyres etc) that had effects/factors that were generated before the period of the loan?

You seem to want to cover yourself in a way that I think is completely unrealistic. Things can break that are no fault of you or of the loanee - things on cars break. You need to either decide to factor that risk into the cost and cover that yourself (which itself has risk, and liability for lost use of the car during repairs) but bumps up the cost of the loan, or decide to dictate the loanee takes that risk (and take the hit in loan cost).

Honestly, for 5 months, this is such a minefield that I think you are better off putting your car in cheap long term storage (prepared accordingly) and just minimise your costs rather than try and cover them or make anything on a risky endeavour like loaning/renting to a stranger. If it were a friend? Sure. Make a deal. But I find it extremely unlikely you would be covered in any realistic way for this for such a short period.
posted by Brockles at 8:03 PM on March 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I used to live half time in Seattle and half time elsewhere. I would have my insurance company take the insurance off the car for the time I was not in Seattle. Now, I also did not DRIVE the car and had it parked in a friend's driveway, but I also didn't have to worry about someone else messing with it. You may be able to find a happy medium here. But, realistically speaking if the car is insured you can still let someone else drive it (call your insurance to be clear, but this is usually the case) so long as they do not live with you. However, this often changes if you are in a business relationship with them. That is, you can lend your car to a pal to get something at the store, but you can't legally rent it to them under your insurance (or not without getting a different sort of insurance).

So once you're at the point where you're getting someone else to insure your car, you're already in a "you maybe should get a professional to handle this for you." territory to me. Another link you might want to to check out is FlightCar. You leave your car at the airport, you can park it for free, they rent it out to other people. Now, it might not work for the terms you are looking at, but it's worth checking out. You can always take the bus back in to Seattle.
posted by jessamyn at 8:20 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for the advice, all. Toddles, I had yours marked as "best answer", but I have to rescind that designation because I spoke too soon... the companies you linked to (both directly and indirectly) don't offer their services to a car older than 10 years or 100K miles. (Mine's 15 yrs/110K m.) This is also true of FlightCar (thanks anyway, jessamyn).

As far as just putting it into storage goes, Brockles, I have yet to find any that isn't prohibitively expensive.

Any other suggestions?
posted by t(h)om(as) at 10:43 PM on March 11, 2015

As far as just putting it into storage goes, Brockles, I have yet to find any that isn't prohibitively expensive.

In a healthy city, land (and therefore rents) downtown is going to be expensive almost by definition. If you really don't need the car for several months, search Craigslist for some privately owned garage for rent way out in the country, preferably along a bus route so you can get home after leaving the car there.
posted by jon1270 at 2:55 AM on March 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

Make sure you get a security deposit up front on top of whatever rental fee you charge.
posted by unreasonable at 5:20 AM on March 12, 2015

Be aware that, as the owner of the car, no matter who has the insurance, you have liability in the case of an accident... You CAN be sued if someone driving the car kills/hurts someone, or does property damage. Lawsuits can run well beyond the limits of any insurance on the car.... I am not a lawyer....
posted by HuronBob at 5:34 AM on March 12, 2015

Another thing to keep in mind is the large number of things that can go wrong on a 15 year old car, even one with relatively low miles. There are lots of important pieces of plastic and rubber that could potentially fail in expensive ways, and it can be a messy question of who is responsible to pay for it, is there an expectation that alternative transportation is provided, etc. The good thing is that you could just sell the thing for about the same price you bought it for, since older cars don't really lose much value, and get another beater next winter if it seems necessary.
posted by rockindata at 5:57 AM on March 12, 2015

As far as just putting it into storage goes, Brockles, I have yet to find any that isn't prohibitively expensive.

Define prohibitively expensive - there is one in central Seattle at the Ferguson terminal that is $100 a month, but I found ones for $60 a month too. I cannot foresee $300-500 being a smaller expense than having some random stranger borrow your car after you consider wear and tear, legal contract making (for which you'd probably need a lawyer or its worthless) and the hassle involved. If you went further out of the city I suspect you'd find some farmer or land owner that would let you park the car there for $50 a month cash.

With a 15 year old car, this seems like a terrible idea, frankly. People won't pay much for it (because it is old and potentially unreliable) and the hassle involved would be great, I think.
posted by Brockles at 6:25 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've dealt with the car storage thing before in seattle. You need to network around with people, check craigslist, etc. There's places up in lake city or even further north(kenmore/bothell area and lynnwood and such) that are both easily if time consumingly busable, and CHEAP.

Also, for 6 months or so i was renting a house that had a garage... we didn't use it at all. The door was janky and hard to close, and everyone used street parking or just parked around the garage. We would have happily rented it out to someone for dirt cheap.

I've seen garage rentals in janky garages for as little as $35-50, even in the middle of town.

There's also the option of parking it somewhere like olympia or lakewood/outside of tacoma where it could also be super cheap like that, and just having a colossal bus adventure(or a medium-expensive cab ride if you need the car RIGHT NOW) to drop it off and get it.

I'd forget the idea of having someone else use it, and just move on to a cheap place to leave it for this period of time. They are ABSOLUTELY out there.

I sympathize on renting parking right near your place though. I live just outside of downtown, and it's gotten so ridiculous.
posted by emptythought at 3:27 PM on March 12, 2015