Is there really a buyer's shortage?

[Boatguy30]

Are you trying to show a buyer for YOUR boat that's it's worth what YOU think it's worth? Come down to Florida and you can buy yourself any boat you want for a good price. Much less on average than 6-8 years ago.

[TomandAnitas34]

I think Bill here, has pretty much nailed it. Quite a few boats are unrealistically priced. My favorite fantasy priced 43 foot boat has ancient electronics (Loran), original standing rigging, 27 year old teak decks, a salt water cooled original engine with 8000 hours, and re-done upholstery. Asking price, over $100k.
The broker spends lots of time discussing the upholstery.
He is insulted if you suggest the deck needs redoing, ($20,000) re-power, ($15,000) standing rigging, ($8000) and much more. The boat will need $55,000 maintenance, right out the gate. I'm not down on the broker. His job is to sell the boat for the price the owners want.
What we have here is a short pool of idiots who are clueless about the costs of maintaining large boats. The person who is looking to get a forty foot plus boat these days is a shrewd buyer. He has worked his way up from smaller boats and knows what he's looking at. He knows a deal and he knows a dog. You can't spray paint the engine, varnish the wood, hang some plants and make a sale. The wiring is still 30 years old and a corroded, patched, rats nest. Most owners don't realize that inflation is eating their "bottom" price at a rate of 7% every year. ( The real rate, not the government's cooked up number ). Three years of sitting, they've lost over 20%, even if the numbers look good.
The savvy buyer is also aware, the day he signs the contract, he'll be the seller before too long. The boat will be older, and he will be the one trying to recoup his investment in a market that could get so much worse. I've been characterized as a bottom feeder, a cheap skate looking to take advantage of the poor sellers, and someone who wants something for nothing. OK. I'm cool with that. However, the market is what it is. Like so many of my fellow sailors, I know what I have, I know what I want, and I've spent far too many years working on boats in the driveway. If you want to sell me a project, it had better be worth my time. I'm 58 and as I have less and less time every year, it's becoming more and more valuable. If it's going to take me 400 hours plus materials to fix the deferred maintenance on your "Bristol" yacht, there better be near $50,000 off the price.

[jm21]

Originally Posted by clockwork orange

When a house sells any real estate agent is able look up what the house actually SOLD for whereas we, the general public are only able to see what it was listed for. Does anyone know if the prices that boats actually sold for is available to brokers, this would be good info to know to buyers and sellers alike i think.

Steve.

There at least used to be a yachtworld site that brokers could access listing sold prices, but from what I saw they were not very honest about it and tended to list the asking price as the sold price.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Always been a shortage of "good" boats - always been an excess of numpty Vendors.

If "You" are taking over a year (let alone 2 years ) to sell anything it is either very rare and specialised (and boats don't fit into that category) or you are doing something very wrong - and that likely either by not telling anyone , or by being way off on price / condition.

My bet is that most of the 1 or 2 years is an expensive educational experiance for a Vendor - until they realise they cannot sell at the price wanted (needed?) and either drop the price or decide not to sell - either way they have to suck up reality eventually. and in the meantime are forking out for expenses and maintanence costs - either by paying for it or being reflected in sale price (plus some). The double whammy on acheiving a sale is being overpriced and ever more poorly maintained as time goes by.

Having said that, always a chance of lucking onto a numpty buyer - but not so many of those around nowadays, not because folks have on average got smarter! but because numpties usually require credit (when folks are spending own money tend to be a bit smarter / more careful) - meeting payments?, "worry about that later" .

Of course being in a small market (less boats) can push prices up - but also makes acheiving a sale more difficult (less Punters).

[Snore]

DOJ,

The first part of my boat search was spent on educating myself on boats of this size. There have been numerous posts about newbies wasting people's time, not wanting to be one of them, I read anything I could.... Even some of your posts :>). After that it was a question of looking at a decent number of boats before I found one that met my needs, at the price I was willing to pay, in the SE US.

Regarding the sale of my condo- at the top of the market, our condo was worth around $600,000. It is now on the market for almost 1/3 less! As I said in my original post, my wife and I do not NEED to sell the condo, we WANT to sell the condo. And like all wants vs. needs, we are willing to wait.

Oh yeah-- Of course if a dashing Brit sailor needs a winter home in S FLA, we are always open to offers.

I suspect there are a large number of people selling boats that feel the same as I do, especially the older boats, owned by older people. They want to sell, but cannot see their (often) prized possession sell for "only" $x. I have looked at boats in that situation, the owners are willing to wait out what they see as a soft market, use the boat and see what happens. They will maintain that position until they reach the "need" to sell it point.

Bill

Sorry for the thread drift, but certain points needed to be addressed

[jmackay]

This type of market is very different. I read some where that the average time to sell a boat ( sailboat, over 35 feet ) is one year. I have been in sailing for over 60 years and the market is full of tire kickers, dreamers, and wanabes but mostly people who have no idea of what they want and there is never any urgency on the buying side like there is in housing or cars.

I expect that due to age, I will be selling my 30yr old, well maintained and well equipt Mason 43 in the next few years. There aren't many of them and there are few sailors looking for something they can take anywhere so I expect it to take a few years to sell.

I bought a pie once and ate half of it, then I tried to sell it for 10% more than I paid for it. Some one offered me a third of what I paid for it and I said this market stinks. Whatever you are trying to sell is only worth what someone will pay for it. If they really want it then price is not the first item on the list. Hel, the ceapest thing about owning a boat is buying it.

[sailorboy1]

Again it depends on the boat.

I got my current boat last year and it was on the market 2 months before I bought it (was a 10 year boat)

I traded the boat I had at the time in when I got the current boat. It took the dealer 3 months to sell it (was a 23 year old boat)!

I would bet that the change in the buyers is that there are fewer looking for a mid-range fixer upper. Good boats still sell because those buyers still have money.

[SURV69]

I think there are more and more boats on the hard that in better times would be in the water. Some of these boats have set on the hard for years.

After a sailor becomes ambivilent(sp) about his/her boat, the urge to get rid of the boat becomes exasperated by the yearly costs of "keeping" the boat . . . the boat becomes a stone around one's neck.

To me, these are the boats that make it a "buyer's market".

Those boats that are used every year, are of quality pedigree and newer seem to be selling in a more balanced(monetary), environ.

For the person whose looking for an older, quality boat, a little elbow grease and a little luck can wind up offesetting a lot of money these days.

[Sir G]

I have been scouting the used yacht market for about a year now, although for various reasons the decision to actually buy one could only be made this week. Over the months I bookmarked and shortlisted about 30 units in the 46-ft, upmarket range (HR, Najad, Hylas, Oyster et al. most of them 5 to 10 years old) and set up alerts for new offerings. Well, about two thirds of these are no longer advertised, meaning that they have either been sold or removed from the market. This seems to indicate that, at least in that particular build range, reasonably recent, well equipped yachts, sell quite fast. Of course, I don't know how long they actually stayed on the market, except for a few I saw come and go in no time.

It is indeed reminiscent of what happens on the used homes market.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by jmackay

........ Whatever you are trying to sell is only worth what someone will pay for it.......

And that is it in a nutshell, always has been and always will be. No amount of fancy talking or hopeful theories will alter this sometimes uncomfortable fact.

[ohdrinkboy]

I've got boat dreams just like everyone else. Been watching the market for years. It seems to hold true that true "bristol" boats that are fairly priced sell. It's those with deferred upkeep, over priced, and/or POS that sit there. With the economy tanking there seem to be fewer "bristol" boats, and the numbers of POS just keep growing.

[Randyonr3]

Originally Posted by jmackay

If they really want it then price is not the first item on the list. Hel, the ceapest thing about owning a boat is buying it.

I've seen this over and over and the bad part, for some, if you wait around to long or procrastinate, someone will buy it out from under you..
Our boat, A FIRST 42 is to say a rare boat to find for sale, and more so, on the west coast. So when one came avalable, I bought it as soon as I could get the cash out of my pocket. And the only reason for the survey was to insure ther wasnt anything major wrong with the boat,
It wasnt a negoatiating tool....
Another note,
A Tollycraft 34 sat in a slip next to my boat, really clean but a boat built in the late 70s.. The owner put it up for sale last month.. Three days ago a guy walked up and said he'd take it, as he had a 27 that he felt was to small, a 45 he felt was to big, so he was looking for a 30 something boat..
The boat sold for the asking price of 45k .
Another couple I know well here are looking for a larger boat, started checking out a early 90s SeaRey, The boat had been on the market for 2 weeks.. in their hast, someone else came in and bought it..
A lot of people are saying the boat market is down but for a desent good quality boat, they are selling, and even power boats with the fuel prices going high, they are still selling..
If you find a good boat, you better be able to act on it NOW as someone else is going to snach it up.

[Tripod]

Originally Posted by Randyonr3

If you find a good boat, you better be able to act on it NOW as someone else is going to snach it up.

So true. When I bought our current boat it was on the market for about a year priced as if it were bristol (and what the PO had paid for it). This was in 2008 and the PO was in the construction business, and all of a sudden he had to downsize. He re-advertised at a price about 45% lower and it was sold (to me ) within a half hour of it being posted online. Of course me seeing the ad a few minutes after it was posted was 100% luck.

[jm21]

Quite a few years ago I was drooling over boats...then I bought mine...then sold it...now looking again. At first things didn't seem so bad, but now I'm realizing even on the low end of the market people have their boats priced way too freakin' high. I am also seeing the same boats I saw on the market 5+ years ago still asking the same price. Same ad. I would place a large wager the condition has only deteriorated.

We went and saw one boat. Columbia 36' asking $20k. Pictures looked nice. Apparently the brokers hadn't even taken someone to look at the boat for maybe a year. Absolutely trashed below. The broker was shocked at the condition and didn't even want to go inside. That was a couple weeks ago and now looks like they de-listed the boat...can't imagine it sold.

Almost everyone has their boat listed high wishfully hoping the market will bounce back big-time...and the whole time the boat is deteriorating more and more. Very frustrating.

We've looked at some boats with recent expensive upgrades and I can see why the owner would be unwilling to sell the boat on the cheap due to the recent large investment....but that's the cold hard facts of owning a boat...any money you put into an old boat in particular is sorta like throwing money into a hole in the water....

Just saw that a boat down in Tacoma that was listed at $45k with a bunch of recent upgrades dropped the price down to $22.5k. Ridiculous to have even listed it at $45k.

[Rhapsody-NS27]

Originally Posted by jm21

Just saw that a boat down in Tacoma that was listed at $45k with a bunch of recent upgrades dropped the price down to $22.5k. Ridiculous to have even listed it at $45k.

Sounds a lot like something I saw recently.. Like buying a boat for $20k, put $20k into fixes/upgrades then be able to sell again for $20k.