How to Negotiate the Best Price For Your Boat

The final step in the boat selling process is deciding on a price, and that often comes with a ping-pong game of negotiation. Whether you’re a buyer who doesn’t want to overpay, or a seller looking to walk away with the best deal, the art of negotiation will likely play a big role in shaping how the final price is chosen. No one wants to get the shorter end of the stick, so we’re here to help. Get ready for a rundown on how to navigate the negotiation process and secure the best price for your future boat!

Negotiating in Good Faith

Before we dive into all that, let’s cover a basic principle of negotiation: faith.

Good and bad faith are like the foundation that a negotiation is built on — if it’s faulty, any sale is almost certainly going to crumble. When you act in good faith, you promise the seller to make a sincere and honest effort to reach an agreement.

Bad faith is just the opposite: it’s when either the buyer or the seller is being deceitful, manipulative, or otherwise dishonest in a way that benefits them while crippling you. It could be something as small as fibbing about the quality of the boat’s upholstery. Or it could be even more worrying, like flat-out lying about the engine’s quality and how long it’ll last. Bad faith is bad faith, and you should always avoid people who you suspect are practicing it.

The Art of Negotiating

Now that we’ve gotten the housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into the good stuff. As we mentioned, we’ll be covering the art of negotiation from the buyer’s perspective. These are best-practices that you can apply at each stage of a negotiation: before it begins, once it’s in process, and during the final stages.

Do Your Research

So you’ve found a boat that you particularly like, and you’re finally ready to send over your offer and begin negotiating. Stop right there! The first tip we have for you buyers is something you should do before you even make contact with the seller, and it’s doing your research.

Before you make your initial offer, take some time to look up comparable boats (in size, quality, age) and check out what they sold for. This will help inform your starting price to make sure you don’t overestimate a boat’s worth just because you really like it. Furthermore, the final price that you’ll end up at is often impacted by where you start. That’s why you don’t want to go too high and end up overpaying.

Making the First Offer

Once you’ve done a fair amount of digging online and gotten a good idea about pricing, you’re ready to make your initial offer. The rule-of-thumb is to go low, but not too low. Going low allows you to enter the negotiation in a position of power; iit gives you more room to raise your offer while staying within your budget. However, you should never go too low; it’s important that your initial offer is still respectful to the seller. A blatantly rude lowball will not only insult the selling party, but it may even make them ignore you as a prospective buyer entirely.

Be Strategic

This tip applies to the entire negotiation process after the initial offer has been made, and that’s why it’s a bit vague. Being strategic means a variety of things, but strategy should guide your decisions during a boat negotiation. Let’s go through some examples.

For instance, while you’re touring the boat and talking with the seller, keep a mental list of any repairs you foresee the boat needing. These are all costs to you as a buyer, but it’s unlikely that they are rarely reflected in the seller’s asking price. Tally up how much all of the repairs would cost and use that total to justify your counter-offer. This is a prime example of being strategic during a boat-negotiation.

Another example of leveraging strategy during your negotiation could be bundling or foregoing. Both of those are tactics you can use when the seller is not budging from a sales price that’s a bit out of your price range. You could ask him to bundle a few other accessories or items with the both, such as life jackets, decorations, or really anything else that’ll make the deal worth it for you. On the other hand, you could use foregoing and ask the seller if he’d come down in his asking price if a few items were taken out of the deal. Both bundling and foregoing and strategies that you can use to navigate a negotiation and tip the odds in your favor.

Wrapping Up

Buying a boat should be an exciting, fulfilling process that leaves you happy with your new purchase. However, the negotiation part of it often discourages buyers; if they don’t play their cards right, they may leave with a vessel that they don’t feel was worth it! At the Boat Stop, we never want that to happen. We hope these tips and tactics will help you navigate your next purchase and get the best price for your boat.

If you’re looking for your next vessel, check out our marketplace! We’ve created a flexible network of exchange that connects prospective buyers with their ideal sellers; we deal with all kinds of boats, from kayaks to houseboats.