Leasing is an excellent option for riders who are not yet ready to buy. Leasing involves paying for monthly board, vet, shoeing and other expenses of keeping a horse without actually owning him. The lease benefits include being able to ride whenever you want, use our facilities and ride on the ranch. Lessors pay for lessons as usual, but can do practice rides and join scheduled trail rides for no additional cost.
Is this something a lot of stables are doing. Why would you do this instead of buying?
Generally people get into an agreement like that because they can't afford the orginal purchase price of the horse but can afford the upkeep, ie a purchase price of $10,000.
The advantage is that I don't have the day to day responsibility of looking after her, but still have her available for hunts, shows, etc. One of the major advantages of leasing doesn't apply to me - if you're a beginner or a kid who hasn't finished growing yet, it makes a lot of sense because it's easy to change horses as your skill improves or as you grow taller. But Gracie is my horse and I've already agreed to look after her if she ever gets unsound or too old to ride. There's a tiny barn right around the corner from our house that isn't that good for riding (no open pastures, just paddocks and one small ring) but would be perfect for a retired horse to snooze and be spoiled by everyone.
Like Duchess said... there are a lot of people who benefit from leasing... The people who want to lease may do it because they either don't want to commit to ownership or can't afford the purchase price of a valuable show horse that is just an 'extra' for the owner at the moment.
This stable gets the best of both worlds, they get to lease out the use of the horse, without losing tabs on their care, because they stay right there.