Boat buying slowing down?

[halyardz]

Is it just me or does it seem that the number of inquiries about purchasing boats is down(on this board) from last year''s level? Economy jitters?

[Jeff_H]

At least in Annapolis, the brokers around here are telling me that they are having a better year than ever. More than one broker told me that the biggest problem that they are having is finding good clean used boats and that if there were more boats on the market they could sell a lot more boats right now. (I chat with brokers and realitors quite frequency as a way to keep a pulse on the economy because they are one of the few industies that feel a recession before my own.)

As to your question about boat inquires on this BB, it doesn''t seem like they have slowed down any.

Jeff

[Don Foley]

I''m seeing the same here in the south. I talked to a broker friend last week who told me that she''s having a fantastic year and business has been non-stop. She said the high-end used boat market was selling solid, but new boats were soft.

Don

[bporter]

Question is - do you think a broker is ever going to say "Business sucks right now, nobody''s buying a thing."? Probably not - these guys sell boats, and they can''t carry gloom and doom around with them.

That being said, it seems that pretty much eveyrone I know that''s looking to sell their boat recently has done so, some very quickly. It would appear that the market is pretty strong, although in the Northeast we''re hitting the peak of the buying time now.

My C&C 37 just closed, that took about 4-5 months to get a contract on. I know another guy at our club who had is J-34(?I think?) on the market for about three hours before he had a contract. I don''t currently know anyone that is sitting on a boat they can''t move, and there are quite a few people with new boats this year.