Buy or rent a berth (Med)

[cynthia]

Anybody with any knowledge of the advantages / disadvantages of buying a berth in the Med as opposed to annual rentals? I'm aware of the buscoamarre.com, but are there any other useful sites? Thanks in advance.

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[zefender]

Suggest a pm to TCM - he seems to dabble in these murky waters

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[jfm]

If you rent, you can get chucked off. It's pretty inconvenient. Whereas buying gives you security of tenure and a profit of perhaps 25% annually as the prices always go up. Price is hugely dependednt on location. Where do you want to be and what size berth? TCM has a 14m in LaNap. We sold a 13m in GJ 3 days ago (sorry, bad timing!)

Beware brokers. They inflate prices massively. There are several for sale not thru brokers, but where do you want one and how much to spend? (12-14m in nice place cote d'azur is £100k ball park). Brokers are www.triangleberthbrokers.com (chris gill) and www.tigressmarine.com (tracy summink)

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[Hunter34]

Just a bit of info - In Marines de Cogolin (where I live) 12.5m x 3.75m berths are currently going for around £35000 (if you are lucky enough to find one for sale) and that is for 16yr lease.The 3.75m width is including fenders of 100mm each side so if your boat is anything over 3.55m wide you have to go up to the next size which sell for around £60000.Each year you still have to pay £1000 service charge.After the 16yrs is up you have to pay again.
On the other hand if you rent a berth (again not that ther are any available) it costs you nearly exactly the same over 16 years.

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[steve_cronin]

Hi Cynthia!

Trust that you and Merv are both well and enjoying beeing freed from your roles as personal supports of the NHS's future?

I looked at renting vs buying and it was the relatively short leases available, which would totally banjax any chance of selling on in a few years time, the lack of control over "service charges" and the always possible future fall into insolvency of the management company that put me off.

My Bav 42 will cost me E3159 + vat per year all in at Levkas, E1774 at Kalamata or E4355 at Zea (all reduced further for 3 year stays). Zea sounds expensive but remember that we were about to start paying £5000 a year at Port Hamble for a 30footer three years ago. Zea also has the advantage of being within taxi distance of Athens Airport's regular sceduled Easyjet flights from the UK.

Besides, not being tied to one base allows you to change your cruising grounds and if you meet up with someone willing to give you a free berth for a period - it happened to some people we met in Hydra - it gets even cheaper. One of our local sailors has just brought his boat back from the med circuit and it is now in Ipswich. The boat was away for over four years including wintering in Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia but he kept returning to the UK.

See you around the med soon, no doubt.

Steve Cronin

<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[cynthia]

Nice to hear from you again, Steve. Yes, it's great not having to support any students these days.

We've been a little alarmed to hear of the shortage of berths in the Med. and startled into action by the price rises imposed by marinas. We've got a one year berth lined up for next year, so there is no real panic at the moment.

I appreciate your comments, particularly about companies going bust and the lack of freedom of movement once committed to a long term lease. As you know we live in S W France, so the idea of having a winter berth within car travelling distance of the house is quite attractive, as is the prospect of more winter sunshine. The jury is still very much out on this one!

Haven't made it into the med yet, the boat is in Portimao, but we're hoping to set off at the end of March - heading east of course. Would like to visit Corsica and Sardina this year, but no passage plans made so far.

Enjoy yourselves! C & M



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[Ric]

I'm in La Napoule too like jfm. As jfm says, if you have the cash, it is a nice investment to buy. The capital value trundles steadily upwards. I go sailing for most of the summer and rent my berth at hugely inflated high-season prices which pays all my incidental charges for the year, and quite a bit over too.

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[cynthia]

Interested to hear you can sub-let. The only direct enquiry I made (Csosta del Sol) said no swapping or letting of the berth - the marina will not allow it.

Our boat is only small (Bav 34). Looking at a berth which is somewhere warmer in winter than S. France (already live in that climate), not on an island for ease of road travel as there are few cheap flights from France to anywhere other than the UK, otherwise location is immaterial.

Can see the advantages of buying, but the disadvantages of being stuck in one place and the vulnerability of the marina going bust. What happens then?

Thanks for all advice so far.

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[Ric]

Cynthia, I've never heard of a marina going bust in France at least. Even if it did happen (highly unlikely given galloping values of real estate in France), you might lose your investment but I doubt you would lose your berth. I suspect the new buyer or operator would be forced to honour existing berthing arrangements.

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[jfm]

marina companies going bust

Cynthia, the suggestion you are at risk of marinas going bust is overstated - at least it isn't universal. Legal structures vary from port to port, but in many cases you get assigned to you a contract d'amodiation (scuse my french) when you buy the berth. This makes you a leaseholder and the landlord is the local town council. The bust/non bustness of the marina operating company is irrelevant. In fact, if you but an annual berth in a UK marina for say £5k you have more credit risk than under this frecnh system

This isn't the structure everywhere. It is used at Vauban, but at Golfe Juan round the corner you become a shareholder in the marina company and that company has the lease from the council. By virtue of the company's articles, the holder of shares number XYZ has the right to ppark a boat in berth number ABC. This gives you an increased exposure to the company going bust, though it's hard to imagine a circumstance where it could go bust since the company has limited activity.

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[steve_cronin]

Re:Marinas going bust

For some reason I was thinking that you were heading for our end of the rockpool! In Greece over the last few years several marinas have been abandoned half finished due to the developer going out of business. Daresay the french have it sewn up and with their centralised non-capitalist ethic it is characteristic that they might keep ultimate ownership of the freehold with the local authority.

We have decided to put on hold the plans to head west and explore Turkey, more of Greece and the Adriatic over the next few years.

Steve Cronin

<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[tcm]

same over 16 years to rent - yes - but that assumes that the charges will not rise, yes? Which they surely will...

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[tcm]

Re: no letting

ah yes - when they say "no letting" they mean you cannot let it yourself priovatley to another person. But you can certainly rent thru the port, (well, tghis is usually what they mean...) if you let them know when you are leaving and coming back.

French marinas (this year) are all going over to a system where only the harbour can rent the berths. For the boaty person, it should be much better with more berths available at ports, rather than investors renting them for a year to someone else - and as that some one else wd not receieve anything for releasing the bertyh, whole loads of marinas were reported as "full" when they are physically half empty.


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