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No Deposit or Low Deposit — Alanya, Turkey
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Car Hire in Mahmutlar, Oba and Kestel:Parking and Pickup
Based in Mahmutlar, Oba, Tosmur, Kestel or Kargicak? This is what a car costs you, and what it saves you.
Where you would be based
Living east of the old town changes what the car is for
Most visitors to Alanya sleep within sight of the castle and rent a car for two or three days of sightseeing. The people in Oba, Tosmur, Kestel, Mahmutlar and Kargicak are doing something else. These are the districts of cheap long-stay apartments, winter lets and second flats, strung out along the coast road roughly 8 to 12 km east of the old town, and the question there is not which car looks good for a day out. It is whether the car makes the month work.
It usually does, for a reason that has nothing to do with sightseeing. A seafront hotel puts the beach, the restaurants and a taxi rank inside a hundred metres. An apartment block in Mahmutlar puts you in a working Turkish neighbourhood where the supermarket with the car park is a kilometre away, the better one is three, the pharmacy you need is on the wrong side of the road, and the nearest airport is about 45 minutes east on the D400. None of that is far. All of it is tedious on foot with shopping, and all of it is five minutes in a car.
The five districts get lumped together as the eastern suburbs. For a driver they are not the same place at all: the gradient changes, the street grid changes, and so does your chance of parking within sight of your own front door.
Oba
The first suburb east of the centre, close enough that people walk back from dinner. Newer blocks, wide side streets off the D400 and the easiest of the five to drive in and out of at any hour.
Tosmur
Quieter, built where the Dim river meets the sea, with the inland road up the valley starting here. Parking pressure is low except on the two or three streets nearest the beach.
Kestel
A narrow shelf between the hills and the water, so the blocks line up along the main road rather than spreading inland. Street parking is thin and most buildings rely on their own basement.
Mahmutlar
The dense one, and the reason this page exists. Roughly 8 to 12 km from the old town depending on which block you land in, with the largest concentration of long-stay apartments on the coast, a full grid of back streets behind the main road, and the weekly Monday street market that closes part of that grid for the day. If you are renting a flat for a month in Alanya, the odds are it is here, and the odds are the listing photo did not show you where the car goes.
Kargicak
The last of them, and the one that climbs. Blocks sit above the D400 on slopes with hairpins and steep private driveways, so the small manual you booked for the strip is working harder here than anywhere else.
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A dash means that option is not offered for this car.
That is every matching car in the fleet. Insurance options and the full rental terms are confirmed on LocalRent before you pay.
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East of Oba the D400 stops being a holiday road
Everything on this coast hangs off one road. The D400 runs the length of the strip, west past Konakli and Avsallar towards Antalya and east through Tosmur, Kestel, Mahmutlar and Kargicak on its way to Gazipasa. In front of the old town it behaves like a seafront boulevard. A few kilometres east it turns into the thing the people who live here actually use: two or three lanes of commuting, minibuses pulling in and out without much warning, deliveries stopping where they like, and a central barrier for long stretches.
That barrier is the detail that catches new drivers. You cannot simply turn left across the road to reach the supermarket you can see from the car. You drive past it, carry on to the next gap, turn around and come back. It adds a couple of minutes to any errand and it changes which shops are convenient, which is why residents end up loyal to whatever is on their own side of the tarmac.
The season changes the arithmetic more than the distance does. In March the run from Mahmutlar into the centre of Alanya is a straightforward twenty minutes or so, and the slow part is parking once you arrive. In August the strip is carrying every hotel transfer, every rented scooter and the whole population of the eastern districts at once, and the same journey can take double. Nothing about the road has changed. The number of people using it has. Locals solve it the same way every year: drive in before the morning traffic builds, or wait until the evening sitting has started.
Fuel is the other thing you notice when you stop being a tourist. Stations sit along the strip every few kilometres from the centre out to Kargicak, prices are posted in lira and they move with the exchange rate, so the number you remember from a previous holiday is not the number you will pay. Check the board on the day. On a car renting at EUR 23 to EUR 39 a day, a single full tank is a meaningful share of the week.
None of this argues against the minibuses, which are frequent, cheap and run along the D400 until late. They are excellent at the one thing they do, which is moving you along the coast road. They are no use at all for the inland turnings, the hillside blocks above Kargicak, a boot full of shopping or a 6 am departure from Gazipasa. That is the gap the car fills out here, and it is why so many long-stay residents who swore they would manage without one end up renting by the second week.
Four things to settle before the car arrives at the block
Apartment parking in the eastern districts is a private arrangement, building by building. There is no municipal car park to rescue you, so these are worth sorting in the order below.
1
Ask what the space actually is
Before you book either the flat or the car, ask the owner one question: is there a numbered space in the basement, open ground inside the gate, or nothing at all. All three are common in the same street. A basement space also has a height bar, which matters if you were thinking of the van-shaped models on this coast.
2
Match the car to the gate
Ramps into the older blocks here are short and steep, and the turning circle at the bottom was drawn for a 1990s hatchback. A compact saloon of the Fiat Egea size fits almost everywhere. Anything longer is the one booking decision you cannot undo once you have arrived.
3
Arrive before dark on day one
The back streets are unlit in places, the kerbs are high and the gate code is easier to get wrong at midnight. If your flight lands at Antalya, that is roughly 125 km and about two hours on the D400 before you even start looking for the entrance, so build the daylight into the plan.
4
Work around market day
On market day the stalls take over whole streets in Mahmutlar from early morning, and the cars that normally sit there move to whatever space is left nearby. Move yours the night before if your building has no gate. The market is worth the inconvenience, and it is also the one morning a week when driving into the centre is quicker than driving around your own district.
The fleet behind the strip
What a long stay should know about the cars on offer
61 of 100
cars on the first page of results are manual
39 of 100
are automatic, and they thin out first in summer
43 of 100
can be booked without a hold on your card
1 of 100
is a seven-seater, so a family of six plans ahead
Counted on the live feed for Alanya, Turkey, on the hundred cars a first search returns. The total listed across the city is 719, so a weekday booking made in advance has more to choose from than these proportions suggest.
The strip, between the hills and the water
What long-stay guests tell us about keeping a car out here
“We took a flat in Mahmutlar for the winter and kept the car for the whole stay. Without it we would have seen the same three streets for four months.”
“The basement space was real, but the ramp was not kind to the first car we booked. Second time we took the smaller one and it was a non-issue.”
“Kestel in March, fifteen minutes into town. Kestel in August, I stopped counting. We started driving in before nine and it was fine.”
The three cheapest cars on the feed right now
Live supplier inventory for Alanya, sorted by daily rate. Your own dates will reprice it.
€
Fiat Egea
5 seats · manual
€23
Renault Clio
5 seats · manual
€25
Fiat Fiorino
5 seats · manual
€27
The three cars above stand in while the live feed loads, at the real floor of the market.
Price a car for the whole stay, not the weekend
Set your real dates and the grid above reprices against live inventory in Alanya. For an apartment in the eastern districts, compare the no-deposit cars first and keep the car short enough to fit the ramp.
Search available carsQuestions from people based out east
Usually yes, in the sense that nobody sends you a bill, but free is not the same as available. Most blocks built in the last fifteen years have a basement or a gated forecourt, and the spaces in it are shared out among the owners rather than the tenants. If you are renting the flat short term, the space comes with it only if the owner says so in writing. Buildings without a basement park on the street, which works in the quieter streets near the hills and does not work at all in the blocks behind the main road on a summer evening. Ask the question before you arrive, because there is no public multi-storey here to fall back on.
Out of season, allow somewhere around twenty minutes for the run along the D400, and most of that is the last stretch into the old town rather than the open road. In August the same drive can take twice as long, and the delay is not evenly spread: the evening is the problem, and so is anywhere a pedestrian crossing meets a hotel entrance. The honest rule locals use is to drive in early and come back late, or to accept that parking near the harbour in high season takes longer than the journey itself. Also remember the central barrier on parts of the D400, so your turn often arrives after a short run past it and a U-turn back.
Oba is the one district on this list where the answer is genuinely arguable, because the centre is close and the minibuses along the D400 run constantly. The case for the car is not the trip into town. It is everything that is not on the coast road: the big supermarkets with their own car parks, the river valley behind Tosmur, the climb towards Gazipasa, a hospital appointment, and the airport run at the end with the luggage. A week of minibus fares for two people, plus two taxis you did not plan on, lands close to several days of a car that starts at EUR 23 a day in Alanya. If you are staying a month, it stops being a close call.
Each of the eastern districts has at least one full-size supermarket on or just off the D400 with a car park attached, and in Mahmutlar there are several within a kilometre of each other. The practical point is not finding one, it is which direction you leave in. Turning left across the D400 is often impossible where the central barrier runs, so a shop on the far side of the road can mean a detour at both ends of a five-minute errand. Pick the one on your own side of the road for the weekly stock-up, and keep the far-side one for a trip you were making anyway.