Used Boat Market still buoyant …oops

[Whiterose]

What are people’s thoughts on current used boat market?Asking because I would have thought it may have settled from the “heady” covid / post Covid hysteria.However looking around prices seem very unrealistic ..in the below £35k market .. lots of Ubisoft out there.I would have thought with economic conditions prevalent reality may have crept back in.So question probably is “Are best selling. ( for asking price.)?Having sold my boat last year ( and now bitterly regretting it) within 3 hours of going into brokers..is this still the case

 

[roblpm]

I don't think there will ever be a crash. The B word that must not be mentioned means there is no supply. I think expensive forever!

 

[coopec]

I don't think there will ever be a crash. The B word that must not be mentioned means there is no supply. I think expensive forever!

No!

How many young people sail these days? Of course they find they can use their iPad and watch others sail on YouTube.

Is sailing declining?

According to the US Coast Guard, since 1999 sailboat registrations have dropped by more than 25% , a trend that began back in the early '80s, and now barely 2% of all registered boats are powered by the wind. It's no secret that the popularity of recreational sailing in America is ebbing and sadly has been for decades.28 June 2013

Is Sailing's Mystique a Mistake?

 

[Neeves]

There are, at least, three topics in this.

Is sailing, using sails, declining?

Is boat ownership declining, sail and MoBos

Is the strength in value of vessels, attributed to Covid, declining.

There maybe other subdivisions - but its not quite as simple as implied - so far. The OP does not specify what part of the market his question was focussed.


Maybe this could replace anchor debate for a day or two


Jonathan

 

[coopec]

Buoyant eh? I don't know anything about the European market but are you sure it is buoyant?
Why are selling prices so much less in Europe than in the US?

 

[luke collins]

Or the which AF to use debate. Lol. With material prices being so high and new boat prices being following the material prices I think three may be some realignment but not much. Plus some manufactures don’t want to make sun 35 for boats in the power boat world as they don’t make money.

 

[Neeves]

Buoyant eh? I don't know anything about the European market but are you sure it is buoyant?
Why are selling prices so much less in Europe than in the US?

Prices did lift on the east coast as a result of the pandemic, the potential of getting out and maintaining social distancing - this has since softened. Maybe once the new reality sets in these purchases will become a glut of sales - at depressed prices. What happened in other markets, may be different - and what the future holds is anyone's guess.

Jonathan

 

[Neeves]

Or the which AF to use debate. Lol. With material prices being so high and new boat prices being following the material prices I think three may be some realignment but not much. Plus some manufactures don’t want to make sun 35 for boats in the power boat world as they don’t make money.

This was too complicated to interpret

J

 

[Bouba]

Nowadays you have the luxury of popping into a forum to see if it’s the right activity for you....let’s face it who would take this up as a hobby after reading horror story after horror story

 

[Daydream believer]

New boats( supplied from EU to UK) are taking over a year, sometimes 18 months, to fruition. That is due to various factors, but it still reflects demand. People may not always want to wait that long, so look for decent second hand ones. That keeps the price high on good quality boats.
The older varieties are in greater numbers & many are in a poor state of repair. Buyers are less interested in "project" boats & the price of those fall due to a surplus. If they are readily sailable they will sell, but for what they are worth, rather than inflated prices that one may have seen a year ago.

 

[Daydream believer]

Nowadays you have the luxury of popping into a forum to see if it’s the right activity for you....let’s face it who would take this up as a hobby after reading horror story after horror story

What "horror" stories. I see a lot less of such tales than I do for, say, new cars. In fact the only real problems one reads about are with those that cannot sail in the first place, or who have bought old junk. They do bring trouble on themselves. But even so it is not so common.
There is always the odd new boat that someone has bother with. Same with cars. The media will always make a huge fuss about it. After all it tends to be rare news. But sometimes that can be as much down to the buyer as the manufacturer in causing a breakdown in communication.
No, I tend to disagree with that post. It is not a hobby beset with horror stories. But just my opinion & others will now shoot me down.

 

[RJJ]

For what it's worth, it seems to me as though the scales swing towards ownership and away from chartering. It's all about how much you will use the boat and what alternatives are available.

Sailing in your own boat was a good and relatively lockdown-proof activity. If you think there's much risk of another lockdown then you are more likely to want a boat; you might hope Sailing escapes the net. Or you may hope that all that meaningless lunacy is behind us, and that politicians have noted that the country with the lowest excess deaths globally over the pandemic period is....Sweden, and we will never repeat it.

The move to more remote working is also positive for ownership. A boating weekend is transformed if you can travel on Thursday evening, work at the boat on Friday, and start your weekend on Friday afternoon, rather than rushing down on Friday evening. If you can manage a summer job or some light contracting along with your summer cruise, even better.

Against all of this, probably the biggest annual expense is the mooring. Supply of moorings is price inelastic I.e. demand goes up and is sharply reflected in price. So it's not just about buying the boat, it's about the good services you buy from Universal or whoever.

 

[flaming]

In the part of the market I keep an eye on, i.e racer cruisers up to about £100k, there are boats who appear on yachtworld and are gone the next week. And there are other boats that are almost like old friends every time you load the search....

Mind you, there is a post over on Anarchy bemoaning the fact that a J105 is costing over $100k. Good 105s on this side of the pond are fetching about £40k. And since the 105 class over here is way less restrictive about sails actually come with a lot more....

 

[Supertramp]

In the UK the supply of new boats sub 40 feet is restricted (Brexit, few manufacturers). So supply/demand logic will keep new prices high.

Well sorted and well maintained boats seem to be holding their value.

I think the challenge will be with older boats which need significant sums spent to get and keep them in decent condition. The spend needed over several years could easily exceed the boat cost.

Often spending on a boat can be deferred for several years giving accumulating problems. I suspect delayed maintenance on higher spend items will be a consequence of inflation and cost pressures. The effect of that will take several years to appear and will lead to increasing numbers of cheap "needs tidying" boats.

Flaming put it simply and I agree about the mooring capacity.

 

[oldgit]

Bit like the curates egg ?
Our club with around 80 or 90 boats on its moorings is probably a bell weather for the MoBo world.
We do not however reflect the extreme ends of the market, boat values might range from 15K to £350 K.
Currently have only a short waiting list of moorings for small boats, something unheard of in previous decades, but still have a long mooring waiting list for larger craft , years for a 15m boat .
Over the period of Covid we lost a large number of long term members of the club and of course their boats have been sold on, anything any good, is usually sold privately and only difficult or slow to sell stuff irrespective of size involves a broker.
A couple of long neglected classic boats were disposed of very cheaply simply to get them off the moorings, new owners have spent much time and effort to restore the boats and the boats are back on our moorings after skippers joined the club.
There has been quite a bit of internal boat "churn " , mainly with owners of small 10m or boats , trading up to newer mid sized flybridges.
This despite some impressive boatflation prices being asked, around 30% was not uncommon around some popular marques, this of course dragged up the prices of some less favoured brands.
We have had a few owners bailing out either through no time or no money at both ends of the size scale.
Club membership is on the rise but most newcomers have sub 10 m boats tending towards small sports boats.
Also noticable is folks relocating from chain marinas and a tendency to keep boats closer to where they live, presumably to keep travel times and costs to a minimum, plus much handier to pop down to the boat to just check stuff and mebbie have a natter.

 

[Refueler]

Boat Builder friend of mine told me 20 yrs ago ...... there's literally no money in building sub 30ft boats ... market wants to pay xxx but cost to build is not that much cheaper than building a 35ft or more.

Older boats up to 35ft - over here in Baltic - you see the asking prices move with the seasonal change. Most people here look at the Swedish / Finnish market. Give away price autumn going into winter. Prices going up quickly as winter moves to spring .... Its all to do with winter storage costs .....
Obviously there are some sellers who try to buck the trend ... but they soon learn ...
Latvian market has very few boats for sale ...

 

[doug748]

In another thread a link was posted to a dozen Contessa 32s for sale at the moment. This is probably a new state of affairs as, over the past years, there have been a number of prospective buyers begging for first refusal on members boats, on the Contessa Facebook pages. Similarly there are about five posted for sale on their website, for the last 3 years there have been none at all, zero. Asking prices look to be maybe 25% up on what you might have expected pre covid, probably a lot less at the lower end.

So I think the market may well be freeing up. Even so I can't see unadjusted prices crashing, inflation will probably see to that. In the longer term I am not so sure, there are more, cheaper alternatives and younger people have probably lost their appetite for large wasting assets that take up huge chunks of leisure time even when not sailing. Plus we have to face it, owning a smaller sailing boat has lost a lot of it's glamour since the heady days of the 70s and 80s.

.

 

[Solent Sailor]

Prices are solid. I see no likelihood of significant decline from where we are. Limited supply/EU VAT adds 20% to pre-Brexit prices without any other factors.

I have several people ask about buying my boat on the pontoon every year. Chances are they will all disappear when I do eventually decide to sell, but having bought in 2018 at a fair price I think I should be ok.

Nowadays you have the luxury of popping into a forum to see if it’s the right activity for you....let’s face it who would take this up as a hobby after reading horror story after horror story

Hmm...forums are so 1998. My (teenage) kids wouldn't think about looking on a forum, that's for us over 40s at the very least. I'd like to wager that the majority on here have even more seniority than that (which is why this is such an erudite and fascinating place, of course!).

 

[KeelsonGraham]

I don’t want to start a Brexit debate but I would like to understand the post Brexit financial situation. We’ve always paid VAT on boats, so what’s changed.? We continue to import German, French , Spanish and Italian cars by the shipload so I also can’t understand why there might be an issue importing new boats.

From what I’m seeing in regular perusing of the ads and talking to dealers, is that there are actually plenty of new boats for sale, and a decent stock of second hand boats from £150k and upwards. What seems to be in really short supply is second hand boats in the £30-£80k range.

It’s a shame that the UK imposes a 25% tariff on US imports - on top of the 20% VAT charge. We could do with a few more Catalinas on the market. They make a refreshing change from the standard JenBenBav offerings.

 

[Kwik Decision]

I don’t want to start a Brexit debate but I would like to understand the post Brexit financial situation. We’ve always paid VAT on boats, so what’s changed.?

If you want to buy a second hand boat in the EU, on which EU VAT has already been paid, you will have to pay UK VAT (based on the current value) when you import it to this country. This was not the case before we left the EU.