I just wanted to let people know that my wife and I rent out some cars in the neighborhood via a website called Turo which is like Airbnb for your car. We have multiple cars on there ranging from a subcompact to a 7 passenger minivan. The cars are often available with an hours notice or less 7 days a week and we do rentals as short as a day up to multiple months. If interested you can find more info at http://www.zilkercars.com or PM me.
Nice. If you have some print material you’re welcome to drop it off at fibercove and we can put it at the front desk. It would be useful for our members to know there are rental cars available in the 'hood.
Also, just to clarify: Turo may be “Airbnb for cars,” but it is not subject to the same stringent local regulations that short-term rentals are. To my knowledge, none exist, given that renting out one’s own car – solely to drivers who have valid driver’s licenses that Turo has already verified – doesn’t negatively affect anyone in any real way.
Btw I have one of my vehicles listed on Turo as well, and have never had any serious “problem drivers.” While most of my rentals have come from out-of-town visitors, I’ve had a few locals as well, particularly folks whose primary cars are in the shop for service or repairs. Another plus is them being considerably less expensive than any vehicle rented at the airport: the city imposes fees and taxes on airport rentals that often equal or exceed the entire base cost of the rental. With Turo, however, there are no taxes or fees aside from the relatively small ones charged by Turo itself.
That is right that it does not have any specific local regulation. In general Turo does require that a car be legal to drive, but clearly thats a low bar. In Turo’s defense, they are very twitchy about delisting cars on any safety complaint first and then putting the onus on the owner to prove the car is safe as well as delisting for any open recalls that would not impact the ability to drive the car for myself.
With that said, there are a ton of cars on there (besides mine), and the service is very useful. Ive rented pickups from others in 04 as needed for Home depot and moves as well as cars when I travel elsewhere. I would definitely be weary of any cars with very few reviews or trips but once a car has 6 or 7 trips with good reviews, or you have an owner with many trips under their belt its ok to assume you will be ok (much like airbnb).
I am by no means trying to corner the market and would recommend that people who have a car they don’t use often to go ahead and list it on there (if you are up to the work involved in managing the rentals) as there is definitely an adequate supply of demand and it is a great way to make some spare cash. I would be more than happy to explain whats involved to anyone interested in listing. PM me for that just to not clutter up the chat here.
Jeff, and anyone else listing on Turo in Zilker, If you are interested I would gladly link to your car from the webpage I put together. At the end of the day, I think I prefer renting to my neighbors and locals over travelers anyways which is why I put this post/webpage together.