On renting out a car...

Now that my car is no longer insured, my brother Roger has been starting to talk of getting his own set of wheels to use.

Anyways, it doesn't look like he'd be interested in buying my car, but he seems to be interested in renting it from me, or perhaps working out some sort of shared usage arrangement.

At the moment I'm kind of clueless as to what to charge him for said usage, and also wondering if there's any advantage to having the car road-worthy rather than sitting around for a half-year or so (ie. prevent something from stiffening up or something). Any suggestions?

Comments

If you don't plan on using it much and he is, I suggest something along the lines of him paying insurance, and each of you paying for the gas that you use. That way, the car stays on the road (and doesn't sit there), and Dave can still use the vehicle if he needs it. Priority of use would be something that would have to be discussed between the two of you, but that's for you to decide.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I'm not quite sure as to the relationship between annual depreciation rates, and I except myself to be using said car for a relatively small percentage of the time (basically the occasional roadtrip ... high mileage, but low time of use), whereas I expect that he'd be using the vehicle quite frequently. Thus, I'm just wondering if the added depreciation due to extra use (and thereby also greater potential for collisions and the like) would greatly outway the cost of buying insurance for spans of a day or two.

The main depreciation factor for cars is age. Once your car gets over certain values, the price will remain relatively fixed over cars of the same make, model, and year. Since you don't know if you want to sell your car, having your brother insure it and use it (and you also, when you want/need to) is really the best of both worlds. The difference in depreciation over a year between a driven-often car and a not-driven-at-all car is negligible.