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sailorboy1 · 04-12-2009, 03:48

You need to shop around the lenders. I financed 70% of purchase on a 21 year old boat with Essex just this past April.

marc2012 · 04-12-2009, 04:45

Do not visit cap one.Sold last boat looking for another.I called the bank to borrow on my own money.Six % if boat is financed.8.1 to borrow on cd.You can tell the govt. is involved in banking.

MJWEENZ · 04-12-2009, 06:33

I havn't financed a boat in a while, but the last time I did I went through Boat/US and found them to be pretty easy to work with. FWIW

Mike
s/v Fair Wind

Liam Wald · 04-12-2009, 06:34

In this, a buyers market, I would bet that there are more than afew sellers who would be willing to carry a note.
In 1982 when I bought my second boat I made offers through brokers contingent upon seller financing. I found a seller who was willing to do so and bought a Mason. It worked out great for everyone.

marc2012 · 04-12-2009, 06:37

Instead of financing just cashed in cd.Used to be 2% above but now 2% above prime.Masons nice boats was intrested in one while back but in china,not good.

gonesail · 04-12-2009, 07:21

keep saving your money .. better to own your boat than to be paying some bank. just wait until you try to insure a 30 year old boat !!

Anzo · 04-12-2009, 07:21

Seller financing is how I bought my Rasmus. I've got some boats bookmarked on Yachtworld that I may be interested in moving up to that have apparently been on the market for over 2 years or more. Surely with a properly drawn up contract, using a persuasive broker who could really use a commission, there are owners out there who would just love to be out from under storage/slip payments, insurance, and all the rest. I offered nearly full asking price, put 1/3 down, paid it off over 2 years at no interest, but gave an additional 5k to make it happen. Everybody happy.

Tempest245 · 04-12-2009, 08:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by MJWEENZ

I havn't financed a boat in a while, but the last time I did I went through Boat/US and found them to be pretty easy to work with. FWIW

Mike
s/v Fair Wind

I think Boat US draws the line at 20 years old. Worth checking though.

scallywag · 04-12-2009, 10:35

I found financing through an ad on Boat Trader online website. I was looking for a 10 year note and up popped an offer from Key Bank. Boat U.S. also advertises boat loans. If I wanted until now, I would have saved a lot of money because of the economy. The boat was over 20 years old, when I finacned it.

John

barnakiel · 04-12-2009, 17:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Target9000

So you know what sucks? Financing a boat right now.

If it sucks, do not use it.

It took me some 10 years to put aside money for my boat and my cruise. No financing, not a single day in the red either. I wish I could just snap my finger's and swooosh - here comes a brand new shining Valiant 50 (a ketch please) .... but now wake up (nearly) everyone, and the real world is not always that simple.

Boat financing is a business like any other - it is not about making friends with boat owners, it is about reaping them off.

b.

sww914 · 04-12-2009, 18:28

Have you tried fixing that black mark on your credit record? You can dispute it and it may come off, you can also call the credit card company and try to make some sort of a deal. I worked really hard on our credit report for about a year so we could qualify to buy a house, I got a ton of junk off of our report. The easiest to remove were any late payments to a store (Target, Sears, etc.) credit card. They never even responded to my disputes. You can also threaten to leave unless they let that bad mark come off, that worked on a few as well (get it in writing). Last thing, you can file a 1 page letter in your credit report disputing the validity of the bad mark, even if it's a lie the CC company won't bother to respond to it. I had one left, one late payment on my record after a year of crappy paperwork and I filed a letter saying that the CC company had made a mistake and lost my payment in their system and that I had sent it on time. It was a lie but everything else looked so good that the lenders bought my story.

muskoka · 04-12-2009, 19:48

Look at the positives: You'll be able to buy the boat in a year - cash! And you'll have saved money on interest and running costs that you can put towards some nice toys for the boat.

We sailed a smaller boat for years whilst saving to buy our current boat. I'm glad we didn't tempt ourselves with borrowing money to buy her earlier. Boats eat up so much money in terms of running costs and maintenance without the extra burden of paying interest.

Don't buy a banker a boat - buy yourself a boat!

Cheers

Mike156 · 04-12-2009, 20:23

Boats are toys.

If you can’t pay cash for your toys, then you need to rethink what you want to do.

Set aside some money every month. The speed with which your boat fund grows will tell you how large a boat you can afford to maintain.

You don’t get richer while cruising.

Not financially anyway.

Mike

HobieFan · 04-12-2009, 20:33

I had the same issue - I ended up finding a really nice Cal 34 that was 32 years old for $10k and bought it for cash.

All together with repairs, maintenance, and taxes and insurance, cost me under $15k. I have a few more things to update before I'm really happy with it, but a 34 footer with a full kit of GPS and radar and stuff can be found in your price range for cash.

Keep poking around!