Tips on selling your boat - from a buyer

Am I alone in discounting the value of any electrical gear on a boat for sale? The vendor can't guarantee it and the buyer probably doesn't want at least half of it for personal, brand or other reasons.

A sales technique I find attractive with house transactions is to state the price, then fess up to things that need attention and make a discount based on this. This is attractive to the buyer who wants transparency and principled pricing, and obliges the vendor to be honest; it also gives the vendor a defence against post-sale comeback.

I do endorse the comments above on tyre kickers - I had one years ago offer me money in the form of a building society cheque made out to himself that we was willing to "sign over" to me. We all know societies don't work that way. Buyers looking for a sound wreck to restore are almost always chancers and not worth the trouble of endless disappointing chats to lower the price even more.

Selling dry has the added advantage of obliging the keen purchaser to do their homework and settle on a formula on which they wish to concentrate, length, rig, handle-ability etc . Then it's just a question of the condition. The vendor doesn't have to keep the boat in the water and prepare for a test drive. I also have the impression below the water hull condition and osmosis readings are not the determinant they once were, but steering and drive elements are mission critical and a serious buyer will want to see them, turn them by hand and have their surveyor check them out.

Finally, in my experience a survey that extends to pages of fittings is a waste of money - specify structural survey only, and let the purchaser see it.

PWG
 
Buyers are often not sensible and presentation is everything for them, this picture
https://farm8.static.flickr.com/7479/28581295490_5d8386a8a1_b.jpg
brought tyre kickers out in droves. Then there is the vendor who has an entirely rose tinted version of the boat on sale. He knows it's all right, though it doesn't look it. Bit like the teenage daughter who fails to call in "But I knew I was OK". yes darling, but I didn't.
 
sailaboutvic said:
The right boat in Good condition with time can fetch a good price,
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And there is the rub for many sellers. That time can be very expensive, depending on where the boat is kept.

If it is sitting in largs marina you could be looking at costs of over £400 pm.

Now this will have less impact if you are selling a £70k or even a £40 boat, but if you are selling a boat for £10-£20 k, the costs of hanging onto it hoping for a higher priced sale become very considerable. And for anything below £10k, astronomical.

If I sold my little 18footer, I would expect about £1k if cleaned up and made more presentable, maybe £500 looking as tatty as she is at the moment.
She has sat in the marina doing nothing since April, by next April that will have cost me £1k. (Which is daft as I have a mooring for £70 pa, but can't use it till I check the chains. Can't do that unless I am there at the right time, with a back up as it's waist deep mud, which hasn't happened this year, too many other demands on time. )

In that scenario, if I was selling, I might take almost anything to get shot and save the marina fees. Whereas if I had moved her onto her mooring, I would sit back and be prepared to wait a long time for an offer I was happy with.
 
I have bought seven boats and sold six and I have also been involved in a few more purchases such as Steve's Longbow. I have never bought a 'project' boat though I have had a couple of kits but I now live in what was a 'project' house, I purchased it because I knew I had the knowledge, skills and time to transform it., and to accurately evaluate the problems it presented. All because it was something I knew I would enjoy doing.
In yachting, because I started small and in the first case subsidised the cost of the kit from the surplus of a mortgage on a house we self built, I have always been in the fortunate position to buy either new or close to pristine with a previous owner whose attitude I respected. When I started the first three boats I had sold for more than I paid for them but that was in a time of long waiting times and rampant inflation. In the days before the French arrived British boat builders expected you to pay a deposit and wait for a year or so while they built it, not everyone had the patience so 'nearly knew' was more expensive. Hard to imagine but at that time there were many more buyers than boats.
However if I had a smaller budget and an addiction to sailing I would instead look at all the manky ones and make silly offers based on an assessment of the cost of restoration. There is a boat under a tent in our boatyard, the owner works on her most days, the engine is out and all the woodwork including bulkheads removed, after 2 years she will be immaculate but I suspect the owner will then sell her for a pittance rather than use her,his hobby is not boating but boat building. The 'project' is much more viable here out in the sticks with plenty of cheap moorings and working space ashore.
So it is useful that not everyone lavishes the required attention on their boats, it allows folk with limited budgets to get in there and have something better than they might afford.
 
steve yates said:
And there is the rub for many sellers. That time can be very expensive, depending on where the boat is kept.

If it is sitting in largs marina you could be looking at costs of over £400 pm.

Now this will have less impact if you are selling a £70k or even a £40 boat, but if you are selling a boat for £10-£20 k, the costs of hanging onto it hoping for a higher priced sale become very considerable. And for anything below £10k, astronomical.

If I sold my little 18footer, I would expect about £1k if cleaned up and made more presentable, maybe £500 looking as tatty as she is at the moment.
She has sat in the marina doing nothing since April, by next April that will have cost me £1k. (Which is daft as I have a mooring for £70 pa, but can't use it till I check the chains. Can't do that unless I am there at the right time, with a back up as it's waist deep mud, which hasn't happened this year, too many other demands on time. )

In that scenario, if I was selling, I might take almost anything to get shot and save the marina fees. Whereas if I had moved her onto her mooring, I would sit back and be prepared to wait a long time for an offer I was happy with.
Click to expand...

And that's why I gave the boat away - 2.3k marina fee in January
 
steve yates said:
And there is the rub for many sellers. That time can be very expensive, depending on where the boat is kept.

If it is sitting in largs marina you could be looking at costs of over £400 pm.

Now this will have less impact if you are selling a £70k or even a £40 boat, but if you are selling a boat for £10-£20 k, the costs of hanging onto it hoping for a higher priced sale become very considerable. And for anything below £10k, astronomical.

If I sold my little 18footer, I would expect about £1k if cleaned up and made more presentable, maybe £500 looking as tatty as she is at the moment.
She has sat in the marina doing nothing since April, by next April that will have cost me £1k. (Which is daft as I have a mooring for £70 pa, but can't use it till I check the chains. Can't do that unless I am there at the right time, with a back up as it's waist deep mud, which hasn't happened this year, too many other demands on time. )

In that scenario, if I was selling, I might take almost anything to get shot and save the marina fees. Whereas if I had moved her onto her mooring, I would sit back and be prepared to wait a long time for an offer I was happy with.
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Steve there a lot of turth in what you said , there are boat that cost more to keep then what you are ever going to get no matter how long you keep them , there also a lot of over priced boat,
 
Oh yes, bro had a 42ft liveaboard in the med, brought it back to sell, chased the value down with the asking price from £40k to £4k, he had difficulty seeing it as it is until he offered it to me and I said I would skip it. He lost the £20k he could have got plus ten years of £160 a month yard charges.
 
c. I am NOT confused about the difference between a test drive and a sea trial. A test sail test drive is a tool to sell a boat. There is no surveyor present, and the point is to have fun and demonstrate the best features of the boat. In contrast, the sea trial is a formal part of the survey and the buyer need not be present. I assumed that BOTH would be performed. It has always been that way for me; the test sail sold the boat, subject to a survey, which included a sea trial.

My experience in-water vs. hauled-out has been different from yours, 4 times. I imagine it depends on the buyer. I've always found it odd that I would be expected to shell out real money to survey a boat without seeing how she handles. You would never buy a car that way. So it is with buyers; some see it as a house, some see it as a car, and most see it as something in the middle.
 
Speaking as a buyer I'd encourage all sellers to do exactly what the previous owners of my boat did. Buy a very good boat that had been well looked after by a scrupulous owner, motor it around a few times but not bother to rig the sails, spend a small fortune on a professional upgrade of the electronics, leave it in an expensive marina, don't bother to clean it so it looks superficially off-putting to other viewers, chuck a can of light oil in with some canvas covers to make one locker look all messy, leave a few old bits of food around, top up with £15 in loose change in the chart table, get desperate to sell and then flog it for a nice low price in order to buy a bigger one to neglect. That's a real public service.
 
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Poey50 said:
Speaking as a buyer I'd encourage all sellers to do exactly what the previous owners of my boat did. Buy a very good boat that had been well looked after by a scrupulous owner, motor it around a few times but not bother to rig the sails, spend a small fortune on a professional upgrade of the electronics, leave it in an expensive marina, don't bother to clean it so it looks superficially off-putting to other viewers, chuck a can of light oil in with some canvas covers to make one locker look all messy, leave a few old bits of food around, top up with £15 in loose change in the chart table, get desperate to sell and then flog it for a nice low price in order to buy a bigger one to neglect. That's a real public service.
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I have to take my tender through the moorings of quite a few boats to get to mine on Windermere, and passing some boats "for sale", I kind of think what or why the sale. OK, if it is a bereavement sale, I can understand the possibility of it not looking great, but they can't ALL be bereavement sales, and some are nice boats, but nobody wants to make them look appealing. Neglected woodwork (My hobby horse) tells me a lot about the ownership before anything else. Dirty hulls & superstructure etc. I do wonder sometimes.
 
It's only a buyers market if the boat is a pile of shite. Good boats, even older boats (especially older boats ?) still sell quickly. Junk takes time to find a mug.

It's also a very valid point about first time buyers. When we bought the first boat we though the grren lines and moldy looking decks were a big deal. Now we know all too well that they get like that in a few months if they aren't washed regularly :(
 
If you want to sell a boat for a sensible price, you need to work hard at presenting it as well as you can. When I sold my old HR after 19 years of ownership, I cleaned and polished it religiously. Cleared out all the lockers. Sanitised the toilet/shower area. Polished the stainless sinks. Assembled a ring binder of documentation, plus another one containing instruction manuals for everything. Made sure that, for every viewing, the boat looked as good as it possibly could. I sold it, privately, easily and without any sea trial, for around 85% of what I'd paid for it 19 years earlier. OK, inflation means the money's not worth as much, but it still wasn't a huge hit for 19 years of fun!
 
dunedin said:
And a sea trial / demo sail can be whatever the buyer and owner/broker agree it to be.
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I took the forumite who bought my last bought out for a sail in her when he was at the just vaguely interested stage. Why not? I like sailing and new company is interesting. Far too many people think that the way they do or did things must be definitive. Perhaps they feel threatened when other people do things differently?
 
PaulRainbow said:
It's only a buyers market if the boat is a pile of shite. Good boats, even older boats (especially older boats ?) still sell quickly. ...
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I've sold 4 boats, and in all cases the final offer had been agreed to, in principle, within 2 weeks. I also publicized them the right places, I guess.

But my boats were prepped, both mechanically and cosmetically. They were also models that were in demand.

But the main things is they were not shite. I think most boats are sold after the owner has psychologically checked out. It shows.
 
thinwater said:
Every time, at least in the US. It is required by the surveyor's trade organization (surveyor's are licensed).
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Transatlantic difference, then. Over here surveyors are only concerned with the static condition of the vessel. How long does it take American ones to hoist, set and check every sail?
 
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