Maryline: Aminda, is the boat market crumbling?

Amanda Haley: Absolutely not. It's definitely a buyer's market, but not crumbling. In fact, reported boat sales are up this year to date compared to last.

Maryline: On average, how many days did it take to sell a boat in Q two of twenty twenty six compared to the same quarter last year?

Amanda Haley: Two hundred days in twenty twenty six and two hundred and two days in twenty twenty five.

Maryline: And the percentage of sole price to the most recent list price, where does that say right now?

Amanda Haley: Ninety two percent so quick math is eight percent under listing price.

Maryline: Nailed it. Welcome back to Full Displacement. We are here today to talk about Q two sales report. Amanda, welcome back. How are you doing today?

Amanda Haley: Doing just fine today, Marilyn. Looking forward to going over this sales report with you.

Maryline: So let's talk about the trends that we are seeing in this quarter's report. first of all I'm gonna bring this on screen.

Amanda Haley: Great.

Maryline: And if you've watched our prior report on the market, it was back in NFQ one after the Palm Beach Boat Show. So this report format should look familiar to you. Couple reminders on where the data comes from. we've spoken about Soul Boats data plenty of times, but the bottom line is there's going to be only one major source of data available to yacht brokers today, and that is the Soul Boats database that comes from the Boats Group platform. And we as yacht brokers are members of the Boats Group platform, meaning that we have access to the data and we can share with you some of the meaningful trends that we're seeing. but there's a couple of things too that of course are to be noted, first of all, that does not mean it's the entire market. noticeably underreported, we've also mentioned this before. Not all brokers mention or state the price points of the boats that they sell. And Maynard, do you want comment on that?

Amanda Haley: Yeah, we've seen that more often than not these days where brokers will just delist or deactivate instead of saying, Hey, the boat sold and at this price point they just end up delisting the vessel. So then the sold boat's data doesn't get populated.

Maryline: And it is entirely reliant on the yacht brokers. So not having this information from them means that it will be incomplete. And then the other thing to point out as well is what I mean it's not the entire market. The smaller boats notably are not going to be represented by your yacht broker. They're not going to be present in this data. So for you all to be aware, we're really looking at larger boats here because that is what is available through the Soul Boats report. Without further ado. Let's take a look at the units sold. I guess I'd like to have your thoughts, Amanda, on what you're seeing here, because evidently pre owned sales are doing well and that's perhaps not exactly what we've heard. So

Amanda Haley: I've heard a lot of my clients come to me lately all worried about the pre-owned market and saying that boats aren't selling and to be honest, that is a lot of clickbait coming from AI. So I wouldn't be too scared here because the data is showing us that things are pretty flat. They haven't changed very much since last year's Q two. obviously. It's a little bit more. I mean you'll speak to that and you can see that here, but I'm you know Pre-onde is up, it looks like six percent.

Maryline: That's right. So remarkably across the board, new boats, and we had talked about decline of new boats before in our Q1 report, but they're going to be relatively flat and mo most of the gains from this quarter are gonna be from pre-on boats. So we're looking at if you're perhaps in your car or you're listening on Spotify on Apple Podcasts and you don't see the slides, we'll make those available in the show notes of course, but the number of listings sold Per the soul boats data in Q2 of 2026 amounted to 15,241 units. So just a little over 15,000 versus around 14,500 for the same quarter last year. So yeah, a nice increase in in pre-owned sales, which bodes well, because this is essentially what we do at current yachts today. And We're quite thrilled to see that we had some really good activity, but it's really hard to know exactly what's going on. You talk to your colleagues, but that may not be representative of of the industry. So seeing this uptick is is definitely a good sign. and as you said, it kind of disclaims the the fake, you know, claims of AI slobs telling you that the market's crashing. obviously there's going to be trends that are different by both categories. Again, if you refer

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Maryline: back to the one report, you would see that. but in the case of the overall report, not seeing really concerning trends. But again, there could be differences by by classes. So I wanted to now dig into pre-owned sales some more. So let's look at those numbers. Amanda, tell us what you're seeing here. And we're looking at, again, for those who do not have the slides, average sole price, the progression for this quarter versus last year, average sole price to list price, as this ratio that we often talk about to see if boats are priced properly, and time on market.

Amanda Haley: So you do see a little bit of a change here, but very, very slight. Only 1.2% change on the average sold price, and it's actually lower. So you're seeing about $2,000 difference in that change. And then you also see average sold as a percent of the listing price has changed a little bit. Boats were selling at what?

Maryline: Yeah, it's mostly the same though, right? It's like one percent changed, yeah.

Amanda Haley: Yeah, 1% change, not that much. And then of course we're looking also at the time on market, which hasn't changed hardly at all. It was the average was 201 days in quarter two of 2025, and now it's 200 days in quarter two of 2026. So that's hardly any change whatsoever. It's still taking an average of 200 days for your boat to actually get sold once put up on the market. And that's a long time for most people. you would expect or want your boat to sell within at least two or three months once you post it, but that's not the case here.

Maryline: And this is obviously a composite of again different boat classes and sizes. So if there is a particular category or boat type that you'd like us to dig into for the next report, please post your comments below. Happy to share those. It's obviously going to be different relevance for someone that's looking at a sailboat versus a moto yacht versus a smaller express cruiser. You're going to have trends that are different by by segment. And in fact, speaking of segments, Amanda, there's one thing we've seen in our recent closings. and there's one particular slice of the market that we tend to deal with pretty heavily, and we're not seeing a ton of traction. Do you wanna share where that is?

Amanda Haley: Yeah, the larger catamarans, and we're talking fifty feet, forty-eight feet and above, anywhere in that eight hundred to one point five million dollar category is is not moving. Those vessels do seem to be staying on the market for a long time, and if they sell, they are selling drastically under price. One that I can name, and I think we've named it before, is a twenty twenty four Lagoon fifty one. sold for $900,000. In my opinion, that is it a good $350,000 under a true market value. But that is the status of the market today if you want to see a boat of that price point move. What we are seeing move are boats that are being paid mostly in cash, and they're under $400,000. So they're in that price point where people are not having to borrow. large chunks of change in order to get into these assets. So that's a bit of a trend that we've seen. And don't believe all the AI slop that's out there. There's a lot of clickbait to that. There's a lot of doom and gloom and fear mongering around that. Boats are still moving. It will come around, but the price correction needs to balance itself out.

Maryline: So obviously here are examples of just really clickbait as you were saying. It's a lot because you can tell the the voice and the videos that are shown don't match. it's really about trying to find the things that are gonna be clicked on. As you can see, the same format is used for Mercury and then Grand Banks. It's like who are we trying to fool, right? Like they're they're all just trying to and here's Beneto. Like they're all trying to get your clicks and It's very interesting. Some of them have made a few points that were actually relevant and we're wondering, wait, are these people from the industry that seem to like share some deep secrets? But who knows? In the end, none of that can really be verified and if you ask for sources, they can't give you any. So that gives you an idea of of where this comes from. Okay, I mean

Amanda Haley: Right. Yeah, so don't trust everything. Don't trust everything you see out there. You know, I have had clients send me this and they say, my gosh, and they get all scared. Is it really that bad? And I say, Yes, it is taking longer for boats to sell, and yes, the market is correcting on the price point and the boom that some people paid in twenty twenty-three. But it isn't meaning the entire market is dead. boats are still moving, they're just slower. And yes, it is a buyer's market. So You gotta take all that with a grain of salt.

Maryline: Another thing too that I wanted to point out is I looked at the Euro-Date data because we looked at Q1, now we're looking at Q2. If look at the first two quarters of the year, actually all pre-owned boats are up still four point four percent because we had a bit of a decline in the first quarter. So still first half of the year plus four percent. I think that's a a very encouraging number and again pretty excited to see that. The next conversation revolves around co-brokerage, one of my favorite topics. first what is co-brokerage or may not? Let's break this down for the audience that may not have seen this before and we can then explain what this trends this trend means today.

Amanda Haley: Well basically co-brokerage is when two brokers work together to get a boat sold. So one is considered the listing broker and one is considered the buyer's broker or the selling broker. So the listing broker is of course who signs the listing agreement with the seller and he is fiduciarily responsible to the seller. If a buyer's broker comes along, or what we call the selling broker, then he would sometimes in the traditional model take A percentage, usually a 50 50 split, sometimes a 60 40 split, depending, of the listing terms or the co brokerage amount that is set. And they usually enter into an agreement the first conversation or when a purchase and sale agreement is put on the table, there is usually some kind of discussion around the co brokerage terms. Now, what isn't shown to the public on the Yacht World platform is whether a boat is open to co-brokerage or not. So when the average buyer goes on to Yacht World, they just see the boats that are listed for sale. But us as brokers, we're able to and we pay for the back end of the platform called Boat Wizard. And that is where we see the nitty-gritty, such as how many days has this boat been on the market? How many price reductions has it had since its time on the market? And then also if the boat is open to co-brokerage or not. It doesn't give the terms of the co-brokerage, it just says, yes, the boat is open to co-brokerage or no, the boat isn't open to co-brokerage. And to be fair, obviously both sides, both brokers, want to earn their money. And so if they see a boat that's not open to co-brokerage, that's a signal to a buyer's representative. That seller is not willing to compensate a buyer's side broker. And therefore, conversation should be had with your buyer whether or not they're willing to pay you for your times and your service. That's how it should work. The industry, the traditional portion of the industry, is assuming that the seller is responsible for the full 10% brokerage, and that that is to be split fairly between the brokerage houses. the way it works usually is the 10% is split 50-50. 2.5% goes to the brokerage house, 2.5% goes to the listing broker, and then 2.5% goes to the selling broker's house and 2.5% goes to the selling side broker. And therefore everyone makes money and this is how the industry has worked for a very long time. As anyone knows who's watched Current Yachts, we do things differently at Current Yachts, and we do not have a set co-brokerage split. In fact, Current Yachts charges our listing clients a selling expense, a flat fee based on the listing price of their vessel. Then we allow the seller to say, hey, I'm willing to compensate an outside broker for bringing me a buyer. I feel like that's worth something. I want him to know that I'm willing to pay him money or her, of course, if she brings us a buyer. And therefore they're able to set the terms. And that's what's unusual with the way current yachts does business, because it's just an understood or assumed co-brokerage split with a ten percent commission model, and that's not always the case.

Maryline: Yeah, I would go even as far as saying that we know some sellers do not really ask the question. They're not really aware whether or not their listing is open to co-brokerage because that's been mostly left in the dark and at the discretion of the broker. We are 100% encouraging and pro-co-brokerage at Kern Yacht. We encourage our sellers to do so, to you know allow for compensation on the buyer side. But when it's not there, that doesn't mean we can't procure a buyer. It's just we educate sellers and we help them understand the best course of action for them. We've had sellers that came and decided to close their listing to co-brokerage and after a few weeks or months decided to open it up. Those are definitely definitely options as well. So, what this slide is showing is that in it should say Q2 of 2026, we actually had 65%, nearly 65% of boats sold that were open to co-brokerage, which is a big jump from that percentage a year ago, which was around 57%. And then I actually went a little bit farther, Amanda. This is the count of all boats offered for sale that were sold in Q2. Okay. I looked

Amanda Haley: Okay.

Maryline: up for the 30 foot and up. the the boats that are a little bit larger because we know we've seen before that co-brokerage seems to be even more prevalent in those cases. So here again we're looking at currently about 65% of listings overall open to co-brokerage, meaning incentivizing a buyer's broker to bring a buyer. And for larger

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Maryline: boats, that percentage has stayed flat over the previous quarter, so Q2 of last year and Q2 of this year, and that number is seventy-eight percent. I'll invite our audience to go back and look at the previous episode. we did discuss the state of the industry with our friends from Lats and Atz, and we talked about trends in co-brokerage. I'll put that link below as well for those of you who want to learn more about that. But very interesting to see because to me that means again increased collaboration between brokers, which we saw a little bit in Q1. And that is continuing in in Q two.

Amanda Haley: Yep. To trend upwards, which is good. I mean, I love to see the fact that brokers are working together. And I hope the industry joins our trend with us advocating for buyers representation so that both sides of the transaction can understand the fiduciary responsibility instead of being a sub agent of the listing broker and entering into a co-brokerage agreement that way, it should be an understanding that the fiduciary responsibility is to your buyer who you represent.

Maryline: Absolutely. And again, final takeaway, if you are a seller currently actively listing, congratulations. But find out if your listing is open to co-brokerage. Ask these questions. They they matter. Next, Amanda, I did something a little bit different. Okay. I pulled some data for this quarter that I want to compare to farther back in time. And this data is for top manufacturers. So I wanted to see what are the most popular brands that we're seeing in this quarter. And this is our top 12. So not surprising, you're gonna see brands like C Ray and Boston Wheeler at the top.

Amanda Haley: Okay. Yeah. The classics. Yeah.

Maryline: I put a dark green arrow next to Benito, Regal. Those were brands that were already present 10 years ago. We're gonna look at that data from 10 years ago to compare it with today's data. And it's showing that those are climbing up the ranks. Chaparella

Amanda Haley: Okay.

Maryline: seems pretty steady. Greedy White was also somewhere in the middle. in lighter green, I'm reflecting brands that we didn't even have on the radar so much ten years ago. Sea Hunt,

Amanda Haley: Interesting.

Maryline: Jenot, who really propel themselves with power boats and on the sailboat side, you know, we know that market is retracting. Yamaha

Amanda Haley: Right.

Maryline: boats, huge breakthrough there. Tidewater and then Robalo as well. So just wanted to put these numbers up there for you guys to see.

Amanda Haley: Interesting. Center consoles.

Maryline: Definitely sound of consoles. And another interesting point is we always hear, and people have this perception that Boston Whaler like, you know, the hot cake and the best-selling brand. And yes, of course, they sell very large volume of their boats, but it's very interesting to me to see the days on market is actually the lowest for the Sea Hunt boats compared to Boston Whaler. It's 116 days for Sea Hunt versus 149 days for Boston Whaler. So again, remember.

Amanda Haley: And I think

Maryline: These were brokerage sales, right? So the the boats that we're talking about here are are definitely trending bigger, but very interesting to see.

Amanda Haley: and it's interesting to see here, Marilyn, that C Hunt, who is an up and coming riser in this same center console brand, their average sold price is eighty nine thousand as opposed to Boston Whalers a hundred and twenty thousand. I mean I'm rounding up a little bit here, but it goes to show maybe that's why a Boston whaler is on the market a little longer than a sea hunt would be.

Maryline: Yeah, another thing too to consider is volume wise. I mean, for every Boston whaler that is sold, there are over two C rays that are sold as well. That dominance from the past couple decades has continued to play out on the on the brokerage market for sure. and I also highlighted actually the price of a Boston whaler today on average, as you said, it's one eighteen thousand dollars. And we're gonna see what it was ten years ago. I put the red arrow next to Bay liner because actually bay liner

Amanda Haley: Interesting.

Maryline: It's gone way down, right? And so here is the second slide. With the same number from 10 years ago. the first comment is obviously the number of boat sales, right? So 960 for C rate today versus seven almost 1700 10 years ago. So

Amanda Haley: Wow.

Maryline: I'll let you digest the numbers, but as you can see, the

Amanda Haley: Interesting.

Maryline: average price of a Boston whaler at the time was about $52,000. And now we're more than twice that, which is incredible.

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Maryline: and then of course, Amanda, again, we talked about the retraction in the sailboat market. But brands like Catalina, Hunter, were propelled by the sailboat market that is now shrinking so hard that it's like barely a blip on the radar.

Amanda Haley: Doesn't even exist now, unfortunately. Yeah.

Maryline: Brands like four wins that are probably doomed to go away, and that's just that's just how the market moves, you know. So

Amanda Haley: Yep.

Maryline: just wanted to share with tidbits, they're quite interesting for everybody to compare and stay on Tapple brands. So with this, that's the market data for today. There were a couple other things we wanted to discuss with you, Amanda. we've heard a major announcement in the boat building department in the last I guess two weeks or so. care

Amanda Haley: Yeah.

Maryline: to share with our audience what that was.

Amanda Haley: Yes. unfortunately we heard of the bankruptcy of Katie Krogan, and that's you know, really unfortunate to see such a beautiful brand to now go down. And of course that's the parent company of American Tug as well. So not only are we seeing a certain segment of the market that a ton of the great loopers love, not being able to be well, I say they're gonna be serviced but not by the actual manufacturer anymore. So I was reading an article today, Marilyn, and you can give us the details on that. But a family, you know. A man who has worked his whole life, it's now the time for him to retire. He puts his deposit down on a Katie Krogan and come to find out now that deposit may be in jeopardy, and he may not ever see his dream boat or the money he put down on it.

Maryline: Yeah, it gets even worse. I I actually connected with these buyers who put all of the money down. The boat's actually completed and sitting in Taiwan. But because the building arm of the company is owed this money, Katie Krogan cannot pay and therefore the boat will not be released. So it's an asset that's being held as part of the bankruptcy and and who knows if A they'll get any of that money back, B, let alone the boat, which is just really heartbreaking. So anyway, hoping

Amanda Haley: It is, it is.

Maryline: to Hoping to bring more of that story to you, but yeah, wanted to put in light the risks of at any stage, even a repu a reputable builder like Katie Fogan. Mm-hmm. Very, very telling.

Amanda Haley: Sure. Any stage. Sure. Yeah. And that's something to be aware of in buying a new boat and putting down your deposit is to check and see what the terms are in your agreement, in your d decision making, even in the construction loan process sometimes, what the payout terms are and God forbid if something like this happens.

Maryline: So lots of lessons to be learned, and we hope to have one of these owners perhaps share their story with us. So I'll let you know. as far as the next market report, as I said, I'd love to know what segments you're interested in so we can dive into the data a little bit more. I'm sure we'll have a ton of catamaran buyers, sellers potentially that want to learn more. It's very cool because then you can dig into it so far as you know, taking the size of the boats and compare the price per foot, right? Over the years or over the the quarters, age of the boat sold. we can go as far as finding out, you know, how many price reductions potentially. So there's a lot we could dig into, but we really want to make it relevant for you. So either we work with you and we can share this data because this is how you can position an offer, or if you're curious about a particular type of boat and we can pull this for next the next quarterly report. With this, we will see you next week on the full displacement podcast. Thanks for watching.

Amanda Haley: Fair wins.