How much is a new engine worth

[davidpm]

Lets say you find a good boat with an engine that works but is old.
The boat is priced accordingly, old engine but working.
If you re-power how much could you realistically expect to recover when selling the boat?

Now I suspect the answer will depend on lots of things like:
Price of the boat
What else was replaced, prop, shaft, alternator, fuel tank?
How good of job was done (engine room repainted and re-bedded etc)

I would be interested in any experience you have with resale values for any combinations you know about.

For discussions sake however how about the following boat:

http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1979/Morgan-321---Recent-Survey-2054206/Westbrook/CT/United-States
Lets say this boat was purchased for 18,000 and re-powered I expect the re-power would cost about 10,000 and maybe go from 20 HP to 25 HP.
How much would that re-power increase the value of the boat? Anything?
One odd thing about boat pricing is that any working engine no matter how old and the boat maintains a normal value. If the engine is definitely bad the price of the boat drops precipitously, but if the engine is replace the value does not come back much.
I find this odd, sort of a quantum effect in sailboat values based on engines.


In a car by contrast you just multiply miles times the per mile rate and subtract from the value, very granular. Odd yes?

[Faster]

During our last boat shop 5 or so years back, we looked at an Ericson 30 that we quite liked.. but the seller was clearly trying to recoup the full cost of a westerbeke 25 hp repower... as a result the boat was overpriced by a good 10-15K and we went no further.

i think your assessment is about right - no working engine equals a so called "bargain", any working engine maintains the status quo. In that sense repowering to sell probably doesn't make much sense.. repower for yourself.

[night0wl]

What a new engine is worth, what a new engine costs to install, and what an owner will recoup on resale are 3 very different "numbers" so to speak.

Rarely, if ever will they align.

Best bargains are to find a person that already did the hard work of a repower/refit...and for whatever reason has reconciled the fact that he'll never get back the costs and is selling the boat at market price.

[davidpm]

Originally Posted by night0wl

What a new engine is worth, what a new engine costs to install, and what an owner will recoup on resale are 3 very different "numbers" so to speak.

Well put.
What I'm trying to get a handle on is how to figure what the delta is.
I would hope it would be worth something above zero.

[night0wl]

Originally Posted by davidpm

Well put.
What I'm trying to get a handle on is how to figure what the delta is.
I would hope it would be worth something above zero.

Probably very tough to put a rule of thumb around these metrics...so much depends on how the quality of the repower installation was...what engine was used (certain brands like Yanmar get more play than a Beta/Kubota)...

Here is a part of the market to get more than you paid for in terms of value.

[davidpm]

Originally Posted by night0wl

certain brands like Yanmar get more play than a Beta/Kubota)...

Really, I never saw the Yanmar as a premium brand. In fact the Beta/Kubota concept appeals to me because of wide inexpensive distribution of parts.
Am I wrong?

[night0wl]

Originally Posted by davidpm

Really, I never saw the Yanmar as a premium brand. In fact the Beta/Kubota concept appeals to me because of wide inexpensive distribution of parts.
Am I wrong?

You're more than likely right. Kubota is getting a lot of traction in the past few years for the A-4 drop in replacements and other repowers that people have done. But as with many boats that had A-4 in them in the first place, they're on the value end of the spectrum...which has unfairly branded Kubota as a value type brand.

But for whatever reason, Yanmar still has a certain cache associated with it....and the price tag to go with it

[jrd22]

In all the looking I've done over the years I agree that rarely does a new engine installation raise the price of the boat up by that same amount. Like Faster said, if they are asking the entire price of the new engine and installation it prices the boat too far above the competition. Which really doesn't make any sense because it would cost me the same amount to do it minus the hassle. But that seems to be human nature, we all seem to think that we could do it cheaper than the other guy, even though every job we do on a boat costs us much more than we expected and took a hell of a lot longer than we estimated. I am contemplating re-powering not because the engine is shot, it runs extremely well actually, but it's over twenty years old and I'm planning to keep the boat for a long time and the peace of mind that comes with a new engine is worth a lot (especially if you cruise in remote areas where no service is available). Back to the subject, I think that if you install a new engine and put a few hours on it (100?) you should be able to recoup about 50%, in a normal economy which this ain't. My brother in law had to put a new engine in just to move the boat, and ate the cost, not too long ago.

[ehmanta]

Here's my 2-cents.....
If you are buying a boat which you plan on selling in the not-too-distant future, don't put a new engine in, but a re-built one. Re-built engines usually have new bolt on components such as alternators, fuel pumps, injectors, and at least a re-built injector pump. It could save you 30-50% of the cost of installing a new engine and you are much more likely to re-coup the cost. If you plan to keep said vessel for more than say ten years, go for a new one and consider it good insurance and the price would be spread out over a longer period.

[davidpm]

Originally Posted by Faster

During our last boat shop 5 or so years back, we looked at an Ericson 30 that we quite liked.. but the seller was clearly trying to recoup the full cost of a westerbeke 25 hp repower... as a result the boat was overpriced by a good 10-15K and we went no further.

Do you think it was just the engine that accounted for the overprice or did he do other stuff that was tacked on the price. too.