2023 Boat Broker SHOWCASE

Titgemeyer explains that the process of helping you find a new used boat begins with “a giant Q&A.” “How much money do you want to spend? When do you want to be out on the water in your new boat? Are you okay with production boats or do you prefer custom boats?”

The toughest question is the budget, he notes. Finding the right boat at the right price requires the expertise you’ll only find with an experienced professional. “It’s juggling the age of the boat, the quality of the boat and the equipment the boat has,” Titgemeyer says. “You might buy a late-model Jeanneau at the same price as a 10-year-old higher quality boat, like a Tartan or Island Packet.”

There’s no such thing as a “perfect boat,” he cautions. “Once we figure out what the client really wants, that leads to balancing the trade-offs. The broker has that expert knowledge to guide the client from ‘I just started shopping’ to ‘This is the right boat for you.’”

Capt. John Kaiser Jr., owner of Yacht View Brokerage LLC, notes that boat buyers are far more sophisticated and well-informed than they were 20 or 30 years ago. “It’s so different from the days when people would find boats in the Soundings classifieds,” he chuckles. “Once you start looking for your next boat, you get obsessed,” he says. “There should be rehab for the boat-buying experience. When a new client calls me, 98 percent of the time, they already know what they want. They go to boat shows, they do their research, they have the means and you don’t have to qualify them.”

Good used boats are getting hard to find in the current marketplace, and when they do come up for sale, they sell quickly, Kaiser notes during a recent phone interview. “Today, I’m in Oriental, North Carolina, with the folks who called me last week. They were referred to me by a buddy of theirs who bought a boat several years ago, and they wanted one just like it. That was last Thursday. Here it is Tuesday. We went from one phone call and here we are completing the survey today. That’s a typical day in the life of a typical boat broker today.”

Jim Dean, owner of Dean Yacht Company on Kent Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has a deep background in servicing boats, and that gives him a unique perspective on helping a client buy or sell a used boat. “I’ve been a service guy since 2006,” he says. “When you’re looking at a center console, where’s the money? It’s hanging off the end. If the motors have been neglected, we don’t even want to consider it.”

Dean notes that one client gave up trying to buy a boat on his own, wasting money on flying to Florida to try to see a boat that wasn’t ready to sell. “He said, ‘That’s not my job. I want you to represent me.’ I can get the inside scoop. I can take a headache off your plate, talking to the other broker, getting the service records, finding out everything about the boat, making sure it’s been taken care of—making sure it’s the real deal. That’s what brokers do…We do all the paperwork. Buyers don’t understand what it takes to get that boat to closing. All the buyer has to do is look at the boat and agree on the price.”

With his service background, Dean says he can provide the added value of ongoing maintenance. “Now that you’ve got the boat, you’ve got to fix the items on the survey to-do list. Those five things, I know all the service guys, I can get them fixed. I manage the boat for the whole time you own it. I hope you become a customer for life.” 