Paying to store a car somewhere is especially painful. You’re not using it but you have to put it…somewhere for a while.
I was tempted to just find someone with a bunch of land and pay them like $100 for five months to let me park my car there. A few factors made me actually bite the bullet and pay for a more professional option:
1. We live in a place that gets a ton of snow everywhere. Shoveling a car out of 10+ feet of snow after what is likely to be a 24h+ international journey sounds terrible. Also, if the road isn’t plowed well, we couldn’t get out anyway.
2. Critters like warm, unattended spaces. Getting home to a mouse-infested vehicle sounds pretty terrible.
3. If the vehicle were not at the airport, we would still have to figure out and pay for transportation to and from the airport. Since we live several hours from the nearest big airport, that was at least $500 each way in a shuttle.
4. Flying in and out of a big airport is so much cheaper. If we had left from the small airport near our home, we would easily have laid an extra $400 per person ($1600 total!) each way since the tickets from the small airport are so much more expensive.
For people who just want a place to park their car for a while
We’re using stowit.com. It’s $90/month to keep it at the airport, and the lot has 24/7 security and someone to jump the car when it (inevitably) doesn’t start after we return from a 20+h flight from…wherever we spend New Year’ Eve!
They have multiple options for storage locations, from a professional parking area like we’re using to what looks like someone’s farm. They also have options for oversized vehicles and RVs.
Other ideas:
Writing vehicle storage into your lease if you’re renting out your house, asking a neighbor with a large driveway or some land, public or private airport parking lots
For people who want to make some cash
Avail.com has you park your car at the airport and then rents out your car to people arriving at the airport. They clean it etc and handle insurance. They say they don’t charge you for keeping your vehicle there and that you may even make money. It seems like a good idea in theory, but we’re going to be gone long enough that we were worried about the additional mileage.
Turo.com is Airbnb for cars. This may be an option if you have a friend or family member willing to help deliver keys to people renting your car.