9. Inside the Market - Yacht Sales Insights & Trends for November 2025 - Berthon International Yacht Brokerage

Inside the Market returns for November 2025 with a straight talking look at what is really happening in the yacht world right now. In this episode, Berthon International’s Sue Grant is joined by Alan Baines, Managing Director of Berthon USA, to unpack refit trends, pricing reality, and why some yachts are quietly selling while others sit and gather dust.

They begin in Palma, where Berthon’s refit and service operation is busier than ever, but the profile of work has shifted. The focus now is on seaworthiness, safety and essential maintenance, not teak decks and shiny cosmetics. Owners are spending to keep boats safe and moving, not to win beauty contests.

Across the Atlantic, the US brokerage market is surprisingly active, helped by one key factor: realistic sellers. Alan explains that where owners accept genuine market value, yachts are changing hands. Where they cling to 2022 pricing, they simply do not. Overpriced yachts remain a major drag on the market, often the result of brokers over promising to secure the listing in the first place.

That leads to one of the central themes of this episode. The market is more diverse and specialised than ever, and no broker can credibly be an expert in every segment. Choosing someone who truly understands your type of yacht may not support an over optimistic asking price, but it dramatically improves the chances of a sale within a sensible time frame.

Price remains the main driver of deals. Extra equipment and long option lists rarely raise the headline number. They make a yacht easier to sell, not inherently worth more. In a cautious, cost conscious environment, buyers reward value, not gadget count.

Presentation also matters. With a good choice of yachts on the market, buyers are deeply project averse. Cluttered interiors, obvious deferred maintenance and “fixer upper” listings are sticking. Clean, de personalised, well prepared yachts are the ones that get serious viewings and offers.

Location is the final, often overlooked, factor. As winter bites and charter flights shut down, anything parked in a hard to reach corner of the Med or Caribbean becomes difficult to show. If a visit involves multiple connections and an overnight stay, most buyers will simply not go. Until flight schedules resume in spring, badly located yachts are at a real disadvantage.

Across the conversation, Sue and Alan keep circling back to seven simple truths that define this market right now:

1.Refit demand is strong, but focused on safety and seaworthiness.
2.In the USA, deals are happening where sellers accept true market pricing.
3.There are still too many overpriced yachts, often the result of over promising to win listings.
4.Specialist brokers who know a segment deeply give owners the best chance of a timely sale.
5.Yachts are selling on price. Extra kit helps them sell, but does not add real value.
6.Poorly presented yachts are being left behind. Buyers do not want projects.
7.With winter here, remote locations make yachts hard to show and harder to sell.

If you want an honest view of where the market really sits at the end of 2025, this one is worth a listen.

Transcript

So this is kind of like a little chat that we might have any old day, Alan.

So if there are any bits that we do that look really stupid, or if my dog barks or starts to snore, Harry will edit it all out, okay?

So – yacht sales insights from Berthon for November. This time it's me, Sue Grant, and Alan Baines from Berthon USA, and we're going to chat about what's happening in the market at the moment and what we concluded after our international meeting last week.

The first thing is: the refit and service business in Palma is very busy, but they're doing lots of small refits. It's all about “stopping us sinking” and essential maintenance rather than cosmetics.

Is that also what's happening in the States, Alan?

We've seen a big shift in the marketplace in the last few years with the rise of Wall Street money taking over a lot of boatyards and marinas.

The lovely Safe Harbor is one, but there are several others as well. Everyone in that sector of the market seems to be “go big, buy as many as they can”, and basically we're witnessing the death of the sort of mom-and-pop standalone boatyard.

The benefit is there's quite a lot of capital flowing into these places – and a lot of them needed that. The downside is they don't appear, in some cases, to be really that good at actually running a boatyard. So that's a drawback.

We've seen some instances this fall where key employees have left some of these groups. Those key employees have been with those boatyards for quite a while. Consequently, they don't have anyone to get the boats out of the water or winterize them, so they're running really behind on some of that. I suspect that's probably overflowing into the routine service industry as well.

We have experienced huge price rises in getting any service work done. The average labour rate now is probably $150 an hour. And then when you get to the skilled trades – the electronics and things like that – you're up closer to $200 an hour.

Wow. So if it's $200 an hour, you are, what's that, sort of $1,600 a day – and we all know sometimes you don't get an awful lot for a day's work in this industry. So it really is, in that case, going to be basic maintenance. Nobody’s doing the pretty stuff, if they can avoid it.

So you're seeing a shift – the people who just have a simple boat and potter about are getting priced out of the whole sport in a lot of ways. I think yachting is becoming more expensive, isn't it?

Yachting is becoming more expensive. It's becoming very expensive.

We have also witnessed this year, more than any other year I can remember, a massive uptick in scrapping of sailboats. There always used to be some buyer, even at five thousand bucks or ten thousand bucks, but those guys just don't exist now for the number of boats that are in that price category.

Back towards the end of summer, I went around all the boatyards in Narragansett Bay – which is like a 30-mile radius of where we are – and counted the number of sailboats on land. These are the ones with the sort of white bottom paint – the ones that clearly had not been in the water in several years. I came up with 600, just in the 30-mile radius.

So now, if you amplify that over the entire country, you know, we are talking hundreds of thousands of boats.

So is there a business – because we don't really have this in Europe – is there a business that is scrapping boats?

There is nowadays. I think there is a rise in the business of scrapping boats, in that a lot of those older boats had lead keels, so that has value. The railings, the metal in the mast has value.

The downside is literally the only way to get rid of a fibreglass hull still is to take it to the dump, cut it up into bits and just steamroller it into the dump. That is unsustainable as a way to get rid of end-of-life boats, I think.

We really need to find a sustainable way to recycle them. We need to be able to recycle them in some way – turn them into something else, in terms of a material that can be used again.

People have looked into putting them into concrete and things like that, but it hasn't been industrialised yet and it really needs to be. I think that's the only long-term solution in the sailboat market in this country – to right-size it to where the actual industry is.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting.

Okay, so nothing to do with our insights, but that is very, very interesting because it's going to come down the track everywhere in the world. It's just a question of time.

The fact is that a boat's never been an appreciating asset, but it's been an asset of sorts. Now it's becoming like a car, which you scrap – and you pay somebody for the privilege.

So in the USA, the market's moving well, mainly because yacht sellers are being much more realistic on pricing and are willing to accept market value when it's offered.

Can we just unpack that?

Yes. With the cost of running boats going up and things like that, there is definitely reticence for people to take the plunge, which is different from two or three years ago when literally people would buy whatever was on the market. In 2021, 2022, and to a certain degree 2023, that was the case – but 2023 was a turning point.

Now it's definitely gone down. You have people with inventory – new boat inventory – rising quite significantly. There's an awful lot of 2023 product still out there, both power and sail. So the manufacturers have had to right-size, and that always takes a while – the elastic snapping back, as it were.

So sellers have got to be more realistic in asking price and what they expect out of it.

The scary thing in terms of new boat sales is that, because the price of new boat sales has continued to skyrocket, there is now a big differential between a late-model used boat and an equivalent new boat.

Oh, it's huge.

We used to use the benchmark that a boat after five years would be worth about 50% of what the current replacement cost of that new boat would be. We're not seeing that right now.

We're probably seeing, in sailboats, 35–40% of the replacement value.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. Bear in mind that the person who owns a five-year-old boat now is still getting above 50% back on what their original investment is, but it's less than 50% when you compare it to what that same boat would be new right now.

And of course, what they also have to bear in mind is that she's five years old, so all of the kit is five years old, the wear and tear is five years old – so the buyer of that boat has investment to make as well. I mean, it was ever so, but that's certainly the case, and the buyer isn't “saving money” because of the delta with the new boat.

Right. We've seen really two of the last sort of surviving US sailboat manufacturers pause production in recent weeks – Catalina being the most well-known one. They're also owned by the same guy who owns Tartan, which wasn't really doing very much, but I assume it's gone the same way.

So that leaves literally Island Packet as the only surviving monohull sailboat manufacturer.

That's extraordinary. Isn't that extraordinary?

Yeah. And I don't know what they're producing, but I can't believe it's more than ten boats a year.

Yeah, I mean, that is totally extraordinary.

And of course, we're seeing in Europe that new boat sales are difficult because, for a new boat, clients can afford the new boat, but it's a perception of value. You get past the tipping point when they say, “Well, a new 40-footer isn't worth a million bucks to me.”

The other thing we've had this year is the implementation of tariffs that weren't ever there before. That's added 15% to a European-built boat, 10% to a UK-built boat, and a lot more than that for an Asian-built boat.

There are workarounds on that, in that if you register it offshore and don't bring it to the US – which of course you can do in a boat, specifically a sailboat anyway – then you can defer that at least. But you are then limiting yourself to sailing outside of mainland US, and furthermore you cannot get financing on such a boat. They'll only finance a boat if it's within the US.

But you know, that's also quite bad for the US from the point of view that we've seen, haven't we, your clients buying and using boats in Europe. We've always had some Americans who've used in the Mediterranean or gone up to the Baltic and all that kind of stuff.

But of course, the problem with that is first of all, their boat isn't in the US using all the US services and so on. And also, there's nothing to suppose that people aren't going to have a nice time and decide to carry on yachting not in the US.

Once they do that, they've got the 20% VAT holiday in Europe and there are lots of nice places in the world.

We have indeed sold three boats since the tariffs – sold or delivered – and every single one is simply not being used in the States or not intending to be used in the States.

I guess it will always happen, but it's not like they happen on small boats. And not that small boats are necessarily a big part of our business, but…

Small boats are still important for the whole American yachting industry. Small boats lead to larger boats. Small boats bring people into the industry, and they become passionate about yachting or motorboating and they want to do more. It's part of the ecosystem, isn't it?

Exactly.

And the US powerboat manufacturing situation is the dead opposite of what the sailboat manufacturing situation is. The US is very, very strong in powerboats. Centre consoles, small trailerable powerboats – that’s the backbone of the marine industry in this country. From there it goes up into the cruisers and things like that.

But superyachts is not what this country does. And yet, there's a feeding frenzy on super and mega yachts because of the tax breaks. These boats are going under offer to Americans and all the rest of it because they have to be done, and commercial and chartering arrangements in place, before the end of the year.

Yeah. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine, Tony Allen, the other day, and his section of the market – which is the very top – is booming, specifically with Americans buying big, big, big mega yachts.

I've got a client who's a mega yacht surveyor and he's on a plane all the time – I mean, phenomenal amount of stuff going on. So it's a funny old world.

So the next thing we said is: there remain too many overpriced yachts on the market. Brokers have over-promised to get listings.

I do think that's the case. And I do think we have to keep up with the market as well. What worked a year ago doesn't work today.

Yeah, I think being honest with your customer is super important, rather than just telling them what they want to hear. Then trying to accurately price the boat.

I know I spend quite a lot of time going through sales statistics and whatever’s available to give a comparison with what the listing prices are – how many are available, how many have sold in a recent time frame (a year or a couple of years, whatever), and how many days that would typically mean on the market.

There is a correlation: if it's accurately priced, it's definitely got more chance of going than something that's perceived to be overpriced, because the customers know what these things are really worth.

You can't just say, “That's the price they sell for,” if they see that the boat's been on the market for two years. It's clearly not the price it's going to sell for.

No, I mean, that's right.

In the first listing process, quite recently I priced a boat and we didn't get her – another broker got her – and the owner very kindly sent me an email a little while later saying, “My boat's under offer, by the way, your pricing was correct.”

And sometimes I think, gosh, how stupid am I? But I think you have to tell it the way it is.

You do. Otherwise, with the cost of advertising these days and so on, it's just not in anyone's interest to have something sit there for over a year before it sells.

No, it doesn't help anybody.

Within one cycle – if she hasn't sold within that cycle – then there's something wrong, and clearly the only thing wrong is the price.

I think we tend to forget – or it’s easy to forget – that if we are spending a lot of money on marketing, the owner is spending a year's carrying costs. Actually, a sale within three to six months is hugely better at 5% less, than a sale in 12 to 15 months at the “price you first thought of” – which you're not going to get anyway.

Yeah, exactly. It's just dollars and cents at the end of the day, really.

That's right.

Okay, so the next one: the market is diverse and no broker can be an expert on all parts of the market. Picking a broker who knows the market segment intimately may not get an owner the asking price they hope for, but the chances of a sale within a reasonable time span are much enhanced.

I think that goes back to what we've already said, which is: you have to work with a broker who knows that market, you know?

Yeah, and it helps if you know that particular product.

We have our new boat brands, and that's translated to pretty much owning the brokerage market for those brands because we know the boats, we know what they need and what they're likely to need and everything else.

We've just, for example, sold two Moody 54s in the last two weeks – one's closed, one's in closing – and those are literally the only two Moody 54s that have sold in the US brokerage-wise for years.

No, you're right – it's knowing.

And I think also we have the advantage with our little group that if you have something in your territory that you're looking at or that you've been asked to list, we have a huge amount of experience and knowledge that will help us assess the market, put the boat with the right broker, and also be correct on the initial pricing.

Because if it's something that you don't know so well, somebody in Europe is going to know the boat. Somebody, somewhere, knows it.

Yeah, and actually going back to Moody 54s: we've sold three of them this year – one in Rome and two over here – which, if you look at all the Moody 54s sold worldwide in the last year, may mean we've sold three out of the four that I know of. Or maybe there were five total. But we've got most of the market there.

The other issue is all these boats – power and sail – they're all getting complicated. So you can't just sell it and say, “Oh, here's your boat,” anymore. They need education on how the thing works.

As an example, the furlers now – electric furlers – are all on CAN bus, except most of the dealers are riggers, not electricians. By their own admission they're not that great at troubleshooting these CAN bus systems, because in the old days when you had a switch, you pressed a button, it made a contact, electricity flowed and something turned. Most of us can understand that.

Most of us do not understand how a CAN bus works – me included.

No, I think that's true.

If you think about Discovery – which I like to think we kind of own that market – we work with John Eustace, who built most of the boats and worked at Discovery for 12 or 14 years. One of the things that happens is client familiarity and a lot of work around: “Okay, you're going across the Atlantic – what are we going to do in terms of the service, the spares, the this and that?” Because you can't just give somebody the keys and say, “There it is.” You have to have that element of support.

We're also able to do that in the UK with the boatyard we have and with the service point in Spain. In Sweden we work very closely with RS Yacht Services. So we have those contacts with boatyards and knowledge.

When we are new boat dealers, we know the boats intimately, and so you get that bit that you need when you've bought the boat, which very often isn't present. It's okay if you've got a captain, but if it's an owner-driven boat, you need a bit more.

Yeah. And all these inventions and developments are all designed to make the boat simpler to use and operate, but behind the scenes they're incredibly complex.

Take IPS drives, for example, with the joystick. People love those when they work. A five-year-old can dock a 50-foot boat: if he can do a video game, he can dock the boat. But God help you if it all goes wrong.

The other thing I sometimes say to buyers, when they're beating the owner up a bit, is: “In six months' time, when you're at anchor and you need the bow thruster to come up and down and you can't remember the switch – who is it that you're going to call?”

So just remember that one of your support people is also the previous owner. Part of the sales process, particularly with the more complicated 55–65 foot cruising boats, and motorboats as well, is developing a relationship with him – it's quite a sensible thing to do.

That's right, exactly.

And it needs to be a two-way street. The owners can't just treat it like a car and say, “I'll take it to the dealer,” because that's just not the way the industry works. Especially if you're offshore, the owners have by definition got to be self-reliant.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Then we're saying that in most cases in the market, yachts are selling on price. Additional equipment makes a yacht easier to sell, but not worth more. I don't think that's changed much – I think it's always been the case – but it's a point worth making.

Probably. And certain markets love stuff – Americans more so than Europeans.

If an American orders a boat, it's got every option known to man; it's got the biggest engine option and so forth. Brits or other Europeans, less so – they'll take it closer to standard form.

Yeah, they're not bothered about air conditioning, which for the American client is absolute anathema – they just can't figure that at all. “Do you need the air conditioning? Do you need the generator?” and so on.

So I think that if you have two boats standing next to each other and one has air conditioning and all sorts of lovely Starlink and all the rest of it, and the other one doesn't, and they're in similar condition, the one with all the kit isn't actually worth any more – but it'll sell faster. She’ll sell faster.

Right. And, you know, the British boat will have the standard fridge because all they need is two chunks of ice in the gin and tonic. The American one has millions of fridges because it needs a whole glass of ice.

Which shows what a very, very intelligent race they are – or you are, I should say.

Then the Americans need the biggest galley possible – and then eat every meal in a restaurant.

You see what I mean?

I see what you mean. They're just very, very intelligent people.

Okay.

Badly presented yachts are sticking. There is choice in the marketplace and buyers are currently project-averse. I've seen this quite a lot where people just don't want to do a deck, they don't want a project boat where they don't know quite how much it's going to cost. They want something that they can go sailing in, they can go motorboating, they can enjoy.

Yeah. To put a boat up for sale, you've got to declutter it big time. You've got to clean – we tell people: clean it, clean it, clean it, clean it again. Even if you don't fix stuff – if some things are just going to be too much money or whatever – if it's clean and decluttered, then you've got a far higher chance of it selling.

If people come down and see a completely cluttered boat full of owner stuff, that first 30 seconds is gone. They basically turn around and walk out the door.

Yeah. I mean, someone will make a decision if they're interested within 45 seconds of getting on board, I think. Don't you think? It's clutter, it's smell, it's all those things.

Okay, and the last thing is: the winter’s upon us, charter flights have shut down, and badly located yachts that are difficult to visit quickly are unlikely to see potential buyers across the deck until charter flights recommence next spring.

This is something that happens a lot in Europe where the charter flights come off and suddenly a trip that was from, I don't know, Gatwick – it was 2½ hours – becomes like a three-day camel ride.

We found that. As we sent that boat to you – we had that Moody listed in Grenada and simply no one went to look at it, which is why we shipped it back to you guys.

I think Americans will go to the BVIs, USVIs, maybe Antigua. But for the most part, they're not going to go down to Trinidad or Grenada to buy a boat.

No, I mean, it's a bit like Corfu in the wintertime – which is a great place, and you can cruise the Peloponnese, absolutely wonderful area – but when the charter flights come off…

I think Magnus from the Swedish office did it last winter and it was something like 17 hours each way because you have to get a connecting flight, then another one, then you get on a camel – whatever it is – it just takes a long time.

And so I think: it's condition, price, location. Always.

Absolutely. Those are the three.

Okay. So I think that's probably November unpacked.

Thank you very much indeed, Alan, and we'll be putting this podcast up before the end of November.

Thank you. Fantastic – and hopefully there won't be too many noises of manholes falling in.

No – or my dog snoring.

Well, thank you, Sue, for organising this. It's been good fun.