Late getting in on this thread. I’ve done 3 overseas sits, 2 in the UK and 1 on Jeju Island, South Korea.
For one UK sit, a car was really needed - in the country in Somerset and I needed a car to buy groceries and do a bit of siteseeing. The second was in Edinbugh and I never moved the car. For all 3 offshore sits the owners offered use of their car - in the UK I provided a copy of my license and they added me to their insurance. In Korea I asked and was told that I was covered by the owners insurance.
Here is the US, I’ve not needed cars for most sits, have had cars included for some and asked and had them included for others.
Some sits are just located where you need a car to get to the grocery - public transportation just isn’t good enough. Others, I’ve used the owner’s car to take the dog to the dog park.
tom
Thank you for sharing your experiences @toml often owners and sitters come to similar arrangements, it’s so good to find a solution that suits everyone.
Hi Lindsay, What did you do for registration and insurance?
Hello, welcome to the community and thanks for posting your link! Have you had recent experience with this company?
I registered it to my cousins address as it was my home base between sits. Insurance was a little trickier as I have a Canadian driving license. Some insurers wouldn’t cover me and some have astronomical quotes but I managed to get a fairly affordable policy through Sterling Insurance. Took a little bit of time & effort to sort but was well worth it.
Yes, I don’t own a car and have used this company quite a few times, would never recommend otherwise. I like them because they deliver and puck up car, I live in South West London so thought ok for people flying into Heathrow. However, I dont know if they insure non British driving licence so best to ask them all the relevant questions.
Great information … Thank-you! We are Brits who have just got a French residency and have to exchange our UK licences for French ones later this year 
We only keep one car so if one of us returns to UK we will need to rent, so looking for some good companies in South to approach in preparation 
They talk about International drivers permit and original license, so they must rent to people with foreign Driving Licences.
Under Terms and Conditions.
Thanks for the link!
A possible problem with that is if you need to get the dog to the vet as many taxis won’t take a dog.
To avoid the high insurance cost with rental cars I’ve used an annual policy via http://reducemyexcess.co.uk/
Thankfully I’ve not had to make a claim on the policy but friends, with a similar Annual policy have claimed and the excess was refunded without issue.
Thanks! - That is a great tip. I rarely book car hires as I hate the extra insurances they always pressure you into buying.
We are able to use the car rental insurance that comes with our credit card in many countries. That has saved us a bundle. So far, only Italy has insisted on us paying for their extra insurance.
It won’t help at your sit but we have used relocation car hire to get us from A to B. Sometimes companies need to move their cars back to popular spots, usually busy airports, and they will advertise car hire for £1 for these journeys. They are restricted by time and miles allowed but they can be very handy if you are in Edinburgh and need to fly from Heathrow.
I have even come across moving RVs from one place to another or new RVs being moved from the factory to their new rental homes for $19 a night. Again, time and mileage are restricted.
It’s amazing what solutions can be found when needs must.
I have been looking at some of the peer to peer car hire for EU and UK.
Turo and Getaround.
Rent by the hour, most pretty reasonable. Daily, less than corporate car rental. Wide variety of cars by age, etc.
Very reasonable if you don’t mind a SmartCar with 150,000 km on it.
For occasional use, like into the countryside where public transportation doesn’t exist, might be a good option.
My only concern with Turo is that my credit card car insurance won’t cover it. Not sure what happens if you get in a crash without my CDW coverage?
Thanks, I took a quick look at that and it’s a lot of wade through. Basically what I want is to have full coverage if the car is damaged or stolen, or maybe a small deductible. I will have to sit down and read it all through very carefully to figure it out.
Hello,
I will call Capital One and look into that.
Someone else sent me this Insurance outfit in the UK.
https://www.reducemyexcess.co.uk/
I called Capital One, my credit card with car insurance. It is a Visa Signature. It is Visa that provides the coverage. I know it works because I filed claims on two occasions renting cars outside of the U.S.
Spoke with a rep at Visa, who dealt with car rental coverage. She said the peer to peer rentals actually come in two varieties – a. rental of someone’s personal car, b. rental from a small commercial rental company. Not all cars on Turo, Getaround, etc are personal cars.
For personal cars (I checked this out on Getaround) during the checkout process it offers the basic insurance, which is included in the price, $1000 deductible and some liability. Then they offer a couple of upgrades that lower the deductible. Both prices was less than what normally see for major rental CDW (like starting at $14 per day and going up)
For small commercial rentals, the Visa rep said the rental process is different. The insurance offering is just like the major companies, so in that case, you can swipe the visa and the coverage is in effect. this is because you are renting through a commercial car rental company (even if a small one), not from a person.
I have not talked to anyone at ReduceMyExcess yet, but plan to do so.
Hi Martin S
I found your comment and wanted to follow up. We have a house sit arranged with sitters from USA. We’ve offered them the use of our car but we now can’t secure insurance for them. I had expected to add them as an additional driver, as we’ve done in the past but our insurance , Churchill won’t cover them without a UK residence address. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Muir
It seems unreasonable for Churchill to decline a temporary additional driver just because your guests do not have a UK residential address and I have not come across this previously.
If you haven’t already, make it very clear this is a temporary additional driver and not a permanent change to your regular drivers. Their residential address whilst using the vehicle will be the same as yours presumably so I don’t see an issue there.
Most insurers just request you to complete additional drivers information form which asks the relevant details about their previous experience etc
The type of car you have, how long the additional driver is to be added, the age and experience of drivers etc, might be the cause for their reluctance.
I would pursue this further with them and request it is escalated to a senior underwriter if you don’t get any luck from the front line or online staff.
Be prepared for a potentially loaded additional premium though.