Investor · Chattanooga, TN · Member since 2014 · 24 posts · 11 votes
We own a lake house that's 2 hours away. We also have a pontoon boat, and would like to rent the two together to boost revenues. There are some peer to peer boat rental policies out there that we're going to look into. Has anyone on this thread done this?
We obviously want to make as much money doing this as possible, but want to minimize stress also. If anyone's out there doing this already, what tips do you have?
@Jeff Bonner I looked into this. Not only insurance, but who is going to check for damage after each use? Who is going to make sure they returned it full of gas? Who is going to clean it after each use? I saw bad reviews from people who rented a boat with the house for being dirty or not full of gas etc.
If you can't inspect your boat and someone says it was like that when we got it how are you going to prove otherwise?
What if they run out of gas or breakdown on the water? This may be blamed on you.
Then will the insurance (if you can find any) cover someone drinking and running into someone and all the medical bills and lawsuit?
People ask me often will I rent my boat or jet skis to them and I Always so no. I tell tell where they can go rent a boat if they wish.
With you being 2 hours away these seems difficult to manage and the risk is huge.
You might even need a commercial license to rent boats, not sure on this.
@Jeff Bonner I looked into this. Not only insurance, but who is going to check for damage after each use? Who is going to make sure they returned it full of gas? Who is going to clean it after each use? I saw bad reviews from people who rented a boat with the house for being dirty or not full of gas etc.
If you can't inspect your boat and someone says it was like that when we got it how are you going to prove otherwise?
What if they run out of gas or breakdown on the water? This may be blamed on you.
Then will the insurance (if you can find any) cover someone drinking and running into someone and all the medical bills and lawsuit?
People ask me often will I rent my boat or jet skis to them and I Always so no. I tell tell where they can go rent a boat if they wish.
With you being 2 hours away these seems difficult to manage and the risk is huge.
You might even need a commercial license to rent boats, not sure on this.
It could probably be done if you had a property manager that lived no further than 15 minutes away. But it would still be a headache and I think the associated liability is not worth the added revenue.
Maybe you could sell the boat to the PM, and let him be in charge of renting it out. You can buy another used boat for the purchase price and save it for your 2nd lakehouse rental.