What's to stop a borrower from taking their boat out the country and defaulting?

[sailorchic34]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

I realize you are likely debt free:

PS: Given what you've shared in posts, the bank likely isn't giving you a million dollar loan anyway with no recent earning history. No ill intent intended by the comment just how the banks protect themselves. You have no major assets or significant income...from the bank's point of view, you are a bad risk.

I am completely Debt free.

Several institutions would agree with you, for sure, that I am a very bad risk. Mind you I had near perfect credit, right up to the point I lost my $90k/yr job, back during the great recession. Alas no one was hiring engineers then, let along 55 year old ones.

I attempted to work with my alleged creditors. They had no such inclination and told me so in no uncertain terms.. They also made the unfortunate assumption that I still owned a home. Credit reports sadly lack much.

While it is easy to find the mailing address of a documented vessel, State registered vessels are not public info. Not in California anyway. Interesting enough, commercial post boxes in the US can be served. US PO Boxes can not.

That was not my reason for having a PO Box, but it worked out that way. I had a commercial PO Box (UPS store), but it went Bankrupt during the recession as well. I then switched to a US PO Box.

I don't know if "they" staked out my PO Box or not. Lets just say that I don't visit my box for sometimes several months at a time. Of course, that's all a long time ago.

Now I was not hiding, I was just living on a boat, as I have since 2004. I did not plan it that way, but life happens.

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by SirSailz

On their loan? Or even worse taking it to another country and selling it to someone else there while not repaying the lender?

I've worked in the financial industry for 8 years (non-bank and no boat loans obviously) but a guy I know suggested this could occur.

I've seen those mid-sized boats that I am guessing could sail across the Atlantic or Pacific, what exactly is there stopping someone from "buying" (mortgaging/loan) a decent sized $300,000-$1 million boat that is and just taking off from their country?

I can't imagine it would be cost effective to try to repo someone in that situation. Factor in that some of these boats can be put onto a large trailer and stored in an array of endless global warehouses, rented pieces of land with ocean access, for years when most lenders would wipe the loan from their books and have given it off to multiple debt collectors.

I don't know that much about how boats are titled, but I do understand that they can be titled to foreign countries the person has no connection to.

So couldn't the person just leave the country with the boat, alter the boat a little bit and claim to have built it them self and get a new title under a flag of convenience and sell it to an unsuspecting buyer in a third nation?

I feel like I am missing something in the mix here like here, that just seems way too easy for the borrower to get off the hook? I feel my question is kind of a dumb question and I am missing something very obvious.

One needs a clearance when leaving the country, when you arrive in the next country you need it to clear in...
Yes you can leave without clearing out, trouble is if you don't have the relative paperwork you will have trouble, if you don't clear in you might go to jail or worse, depending where you go.

[Jdege]

One needs a clearance when leaving the country, when you arrive in the next country you need it to clear in..

The US does not issue zarpes, which occasionally causes cruisers problems when they try to enter countries that require them.,

[Missy-J]

Having the boat repo-ed is not that hard. For items like these (boats, planes) there are repo agents in every corner of the world awaiting a contact from a lender.

If Rent-A-Center can track down a rented $99 tv and get it back, I am confident that a bank can reach out to their network of repo agents and get the asset returned. Especially when the boat has substantial value.

[Lance]

A few years ago a rental cat was parked up in Phuket .
A person rented it in the med sailed all the way to Thailand and was living the dream .
One day a manager from the rental company was visiting Thailand and recognised their boat .
They eventually got it back and the thief did time in a Thai jail .
Not so dream like outcome in the end .