livendive
New Member
So last night I looked at another boat, a 1994 DA270. It's a bit older and lacking some features I'd like to have, but I thought it might be had at a discount. Then I got home and booked it up on nadaguides.com and found that even when giving credit for options that aren't actually options (they were standard equipment), the average retail value was less than half of the asking price. Plus, the boat is not in "retail" condition...it hasn't been started or moved out of its slip in over a year. The last boat I tried to buy, the owner declined to budge off his asking price, which he acknowledged was 30% higher than NADA's estimate, and that was with credit given for instruments that were not working during the sea trial.
So is there some more accurate resource sellers use when listing their boats? Is NADA notoriously low on value, or today's market abnormally high with asking prices? While obviously I'd love to get a smoking bargain basement price on a boat, that's not really what I'm asking for here...I just don't want to lose a big chunk of change in the first hour of ownership. If I were buying new, I could see losing 15-30% in the first year, but losing 30-50% in the first year on a 10-15 year old boat? No thanks. I don't need to get a steal (though of course I'd like one :lol, but I'd like to get a price that's fair. It seems unusually difficult for my right-brain to assess what "fair" is when the numbers seem so arbitrary and meaningless.
So is there some more accurate resource sellers use when listing their boats? Is NADA notoriously low on value, or today's market abnormally high with asking prices? While obviously I'd love to get a smoking bargain basement price on a boat, that's not really what I'm asking for here...I just don't want to lose a big chunk of change in the first hour of ownership. If I were buying new, I could see losing 15-30% in the first year, but losing 30-50% in the first year on a 10-15 year old boat? No thanks. I don't need to get a steal (though of course I'd like one :lol, but I'd like to get a price that's fair. It seems unusually difficult for my right-brain to assess what "fair" is when the numbers seem so arbitrary and meaningless.