So you made the decision to sell your boat,,,,now what? At this point, it’s much easier to make decisions on what to do next with a boat small enough to fit on a trailer,,,,you can put it on a trailer and either take it to a dealer/broker, sell it yourself (while on the trailer) or keep it in the water at a slip and sell it there. But if you own a larger boat, you’ll need to make a few more decisions at this point:
1. Leave it in place and sell it yourself (on this subject I have no experience but I don’t recommend it for the complexity of legal, tax and Coast Guard regulations involved).
2. Leave the boat in it’s current slip and have a broker represent you, making sure your slip is somewhere people can easily get to. (This suggestion can be flexible, as I know people who moved their boat to another state hundreds of miles away from their broker [and sold their boat fairly quickly], but their boat was a highly sought after model. The power of the internet and yachtworld.com definitely works to your advantage if you have a boat that people want and will travel to see). This same couple was also smart as they moved somewhere with natural hurricane protection that had much less expensive slips than the original area, which could be a concern when you’re selling a larger boat.
3. Or if the broker has slips near their office or has brokerage slips, you could move your boat there to sell it.
After we made the decision to sell Tulum, we knew we needed to do a bit of cosmetic work on her and we knew we needed to move her somewhere accessible. Our original marina (where we have good friends and we liked very much) wasn’t as accessible as we wanted and would have taken the broker and clients several hours to get to driving round trip in traffic. We put some thought into this one before deciding to move the boat, as it meant losing our slip but increasing our chances of more easily selling the boat. So after discussion with our broker (at Yachtfinders/Windseakers), we decided to move the boat to a brokerage slip, which is also conveniently behind a major boatyard. Being behind a boatyard we also found the services to quickly get Tulum all the work she needed prior to going on the market, which has given us peace of mind that we’re selling a very nice boat that’s now even more shiny and updated than when we bought her. There’s no substitute or reason not to continually seek improvement on your boat or yourself.
NEXT POST: PREPPING THE BOAT FOR SALE- Yep, it was a ton of work but worth it.
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