holiday home - car hire or car purchase?

[dmw]

Hi,

we are currently spending a total of 3-4 months each year in our holiday home in spain (mainly long weekends or weeks, rather than long stays). so far we have been hiring cars, but we are now thinking about buying a car out there. we'd leave it at a long-term car park at the airport while we are back in the UK.

has anyone done this?
is it recommended?
is it thought to be more expensive to buy a car or hire a car for that period of time?

all thoughts welcome.

[chris(madrid)]

The problems are more tax/insurance. Simply if you're a non resident and depending on where you live (taxation is local) you MAY NOT be able to have a Spanish plated car or worse still not get insurance. And it cant be a UK plated one legally. Think about MoT obligations too. Long weekends - I'd hire.

[jojo]

Originally Posted by chris(madrid)

The problems are more tax/insurance. Simply if you're a non resident and depending on where you live (taxation is local) you MAY NOT be able to have a Spanish plated car or worse still not get insurance. And it cant be a UK plated one legally. Think about MoT obligations too. Long weekends - I'd hire.

I'd agree with Chris, you'd have one less thing to worry about whilst you're not here. I'm sure you could find a car rental company that could or would strike up a deal?? Long term car parks arent necessarily that cheap either! We used one in March for 5 days and it cost over 40 euros, although again, they may be prepared to strike up a deal??.

I guess you need to do some phoning round for prices and working out of figures etc

Jo