Buying Without a Broker

[hellosailor]

Cheechako-
"there can be an invisible lien on your boat....? I thought liens had to be filed? "
That's an old game the con-men play, even with home mortgages. From the time you file a lien (or mortgage or anything else) it can take anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days to show up in searches for it, depending solely on what agency, what database, how quickly the data is entered, batch posted, or refreshed.
You do a title search today for a boat you're going to close on next week. In between, a mechanic files a lien and the yard files another one. Guess what? You won't have seen either one, even if they post "instantly". You still need a sales contract that warrants the sale to be free of all claims and liens, and you've still got some risk, even if you do a search at 4:59PM Frday and hold your closing over the weekend, to make sure nothing can get filed in the interim.
Yes, there really are pros that play cons around this. And courses that teach, or taught, people how to do this in order to "leverage" real estate past the legal financing limits.

[Nomad57]

Originally Posted by Rick R

Nomad. Is not a good idea to buy a boat in Canada for use mainly in the US.
1. Since you live in Ontario, you will pay 13% sales tax plus registration fees.
2. A Canadian boat cruising in the US needs a cruising permit
3. You could import it into the US, and make it a US boat, but there are costs associated with that too
4. Boats are usually cheaper in the US, especially Fla. and the Chesapeake.
5. If you are not a US citizen, you can not federally Document a boat, but you can state register it.
Instead, buy it in the US and leave it there.

These are things we had considered, until the hornets' nest of hidden liens came up.

Of course, that puts us right back to having two boats, since we want to resume boating on Georgian Bay/North Channel.

We even considered a catamaran to make the shuttling back and forth faster, but have discovered that while they are faster, they are not THAT much faster.

For the price of a newer boat, we can buy a couple of older boats. Yes, more painting, but at least we don't have to worry about anti-fouling paint incompatibility. Compared to the sanding/scraping that we had to do on our Trojan, with the 'hard' anti-fouling, the 'labor' on a couple of sailboats can't be any worse. (I will never again have a planing hull that needs anti-fouling.)

Nomad

[Pblais]

I really think hidden liens is not the issue. You can have disasters in so many dimensions that this one single issue is not on the radar screen. You can check before you buy and you can like the boat or you don't. It can feel bad and you can walk away before closing. These are serious reasons. You never go look at a boat or make an offer unless you know you can walk away before the deal closes.

Here is a problem you can face. I had an offer on our last boat that was more than an offer from someone close to us. The offer was from Canada and the person making the offer never saw the boat. Being a far away person you need to convey that you are for real and serious. You will make long distance trips and probably more than one to close any US deal. If you get to the point of making an offer you will check the title and you will do a survey and walk away if you see anything wrong. It's what you would do in Canada too.

Chesapeake is a cheaper place to keep a boat and still a good place to shop if nmothing else the insurance is cheaper. FL is not as good as boats negelkected tend to be more troublesome and the cost of keeping it there is higher. Here in south VA you can leave to go south in October or early November and have a fun time doing it. From Georgian Bay I can see the trip south is a WHOLE lot longer.

I'll stand from by my previous post and it's your time and effort so it is more about how you want to live than anything else. If you can make it work with two boats then I sure would.

[Nomad57]

I've heard the term, 'buyer's broker', and it has been suggested that a buyer's broker will be better at recommending a surveyor more favorable to the buyer than to the seller.

How does it work? Do the brokers split the commission like in real-estate? Also, even though the buyer's broker works for the buyer, does he not also have a vested interest in seeing the sale go through?

Nomad

[Nomad57]

I can't really imagine doing boat shopping 'long distance'. Although we are still in the early stages, if and when it comes down to selecting and purchasing a boat in an area to the south of us, however far south that may be, our thought is to jump into our mini-van and go to where we feel the best area is to do the shopping and to be in that area for that purpose for however long it takes.

Traveling all over the place in search of a boat does not seem productive to us. I'm certainly not going to spend a fortune on airfare chasing a speculative purchase to save a few bucks.

Nomad

[Nomad57]

Originally Posted by Rick R

Nomad. Is not a good idea to buy a boat in Canada for use mainly in the US.
1. Since you live in Ontario, you will pay 13% sales tax plus registration fees.
2. A Canadian boat cruising in the US needs a cruising permit
3. You could import it into the US, and make it a US boat, but there are costs associated with that too
4. Boats are usually cheaper in the US, especially Fla. and the Chesapeake.
5. If you are not a US citizen, you can not federally Document a boat, but you can state register it.
Instead, buy it in the US and leave it there.

1. I wouldn't even think of paying the 13% tax. Either the broker delivers the boat to me in Wilson, N.Y., or he can forget the deal.

2&3. I would export the boat for state registration in state of choice, pay the 7% (example, Florida).

4. They sure are, but I've been told repeatedly that 'saltwater specials' are no bargain. It will not profit me to save $10K on a boat and have to spend $20K or more because of its saltwater history. I want a boat I can sail, not spend years restoring.

5. I was aware of that, thanks.

I've been told by several of the posters in this forum that boats are cheaper in the U.S. (given the current difference in the economic situation in the two countries, one might expect this to be true). A review of Yachtworld does not SEEM to bear this out. It seems that asking prices are still high, even if the selling prices are lower. I understand that there is a bigger difference between asking and selling prices in the U.S. than in Canada. If true, that bears investigation.

There's nothing stopping us from going to Annapolis in October and scoping things out. We have time, and the freedom to travel. Whatever we do, we will be doing it this year. I don't want to waste years looking for a boat(s) to save a few bucks.

Thank you, for your comments.

Regards,

Nomad