So you’ve decided to buy a boat or sell the one you have. So what’s your first step? If you’re buying, you probably start on one of the many yachting websites and start searching for boats. It can be super overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.
Of course we are experts at helping boat buyers and sellers, but we’ll talk about that in another post. What I want to talk about here is your first exposure to a boat that you’re looking at – the listing.
At Latitude Yacht Brokerage our basic rule of thumb is that a good listing answers almost all of your questions. It may sound simple, but you’d be surprised at some of the listings we’ve come across over our 15+ years. Here are some examples:
-Yachts listed for $700K+ that don’t list their engine hours;
-Yachts listed, showing a location of the boat that is incorrect by hundreds of miles;
-Crappy pictures with junk in them. Like this one:
-Pictures of a bunch of strangers on board sitting in the way of stuff you’d like to look at (I wonder if they have enough lifejackets on board?)
-No specific manufacturing names/model numbers of equipment on board;
-Crappy pictures of something nobody cares about, like this:
-The Drone shot. Cool and probably took a lot of effort, but it doesn’t really tell you much about the boat
I could list dozens, maybe even hundreds of other examples.
At Latitude, we take a very thorough approach to putting our listings together. Once you’ve decided to list with us, we will meet you at your boat and usually spend 1-2 hours or more going through everything with you from transom to bow. Makes/models of equipment; what’s new or has been replaced and when/why? Have there been any issues? (might as well get that on the table now because it’ll come up at survey). Service history, engine oil test results, engine hours, generator hours, anything that will tell the story of your boat.
And believe me, all used boats have a story!
Next we’ll do a photo walk-through, making sure the pictures are well-framed, not cutting the tops of things off, and clear with good lighting. If the lighting isn’t good we’ll come back another day. We will also do a video walk-through as well.
Once we get the listing finalized, it goes up on our site as well as all the sites (and in many cases more) than any other broker nationwide lists on.
So as a seller, when you are trying to choose a broker, make sure you look at some of their other listings. Do they answer more questions than they ask? And if you’re a buyer, look at our listings as well. If we find a boat that you like but the listing is incomplete, you can be sure we’ll ask all the right questions before you have to spend time looking at her.