Mid Size Power Boats

Resale Value

And speaking of depreciation, now is as good a time as any to talk about this very important consideration.

Having mentioned the effect of maintenance on values, we also need to consider resale costs.

The cost of a boat is only partially recoverable.

To this extent, the particular boat you choose can easily be more important than how much you pay for it. As a general rule, you lose a lot more on a new boat purchase than a used one.

As with cars, the moment you pay for a new boat, you’ve probably just lost 20% right off the bat.

With a used boat purchase, it is entirely possible to realize a 90% recovery, even after a couple of years.

This is highly dependent on both the quality and popularity of a particular model and is unlikely to occur within the class we refer to as entry-level boats which lose value more like cars due to general low quality.

Resale costs also include brokerage fees that generally run 7-10%.

Note that selling a boat yourself, while not involving the complex closing issues of real property, can be quite an aggravating experience, so most choose to go with brokerage to avoid these hassles.

Also be aware that when boats aren’t well maintained and wisely chosen, unpopular types can be a real drag on the market and hard to sell.

Resale times of up to a year are not uncommon, during which time the cost of ownership continues.

Many, many people, when they are forced to sell for financial reasons, stop performing the necessary maintenance.

This is the most common cause of all failed surveys and lost sales: the boat has problems the owner didn’t even know about because he quit maintaining it at the worst possible time, as soon as he hung out the For Sale sign.

Consider all of these things as potential costs of ownership.

Boat Size vs Cost

The answer to this may seem glaringly obvious, but the full import of boat size is usually lost on novices from the standpoint that the larger the boat, the more maintenance demanding systems it will contain.

Many mid size boats have two heads, which is twice as many to keep operating and keep cleaned. Ditto, shower sumps, water fixtures, lights and so on.

Thus, it’s not so much a matter of mere size that increases maintenance and ownership costs, but one of magnitude – how much more the boat contains in way of systems and equipment.

You know from your own experiences of home ownership, how demanding it is to keep up with maintenance and repairs. Now imagine how much more difficult it is for a boat that floats in saltwater!

When we move from a 28 footer to a 35 footer, the amount of time required will come close to doubling, jumping from a hundred hours up to nearly two hundred.

If you wonder how such a dramatic increase could be possible with only a 25% increase in length, you might also consider why the cost difference between these two boats is also likely to be double.

It’s because the boat contains so much more. Not only is it longer, but also wider and deeper. And all that additional space contains things that need to be maintained.

Then, too, when you move from the smaller to the larger boat size, we find that the size of the vessel’s electrical system increases dramatically to handle the expanded array of electrical equipment.

Instead of having only a small refrigerator, now we’ve got goodies like ice makers, freezers, air conditioning and other systems further adding to all the things that need to be serviced and maintained.

I often find it amusing that the average new 35 footer today comes with as many as two 3” ring binders jam packed with owner’s manuals.

I also haven’t failed to notice that on the vast majority of boats I survey that are only a few years old, most of these manuals have never been so much as opened.

No one but a retired person would have time to wade through hundreds of pages of technical stuff; after all, we buy boats for pleasure, not as make-work projects.

But just the size of the owner’s manuals can give you some inkling of what you are in for when you buy a boat.