Choosing a broker to sell your boat

Selling a boat takes time: estimating the price, preparing the listing, answering questions, arranging viewings and sea trials, negotiating, securing the payment, handling the formalities. A broker does this work for you and charges for it through a commission. Well chosen, a broker saves time and reassures the buyer; badly chosen, they can tie your boat up for months. This guide helps you compare before signing a mandate. It complements the guide on selling your boat.

1. What a broker does (and does not do)

• Estimates the price from the boat’s condition, equipment and history, and from comparable sales.
• Prepares and publishes the listing: photos, description, publication on specialist websites and to their own buyers.
• Screens buyers, answers their questions, arranges viewings and sea trials.
• Conducts the negotiation and prepares the sale agreement, with its conditions: survey, sea trial, financing.
• Secures the payment, often through an escrow account, and sees the bill of sale and the transfer of ownership through.

What a broker does not do: they do not guarantee the boat’s condition and are not a surveyor — the buyer chooses their own marine surveyor, independent of both seller and broker. Nor does the broker create the maintenance history: the invoices, the log and the proofs come from you.

2. The right criteria for choosing

• Speciality. Sailboats or motorboats, small or large boats, catamarans, classic boats: ask which boats comparable to yours they have sold recently.
• Status. In France, brokering pleasure boats requires no particular diploma or professional licence. So check the business itself: SIRET number, Kbis extract or entry in the national business register, which can be checked free of charge in the official business directory, and how long it has been operating.
• Professional liability insurance, and, if the sale money passes through the broker, a financial guarantee protecting those funds.
• Location. A boat that is easy to see sells better: is the broker close to your harbour, or do they ask you to move the boat to their pontoon?
• The quality of the listings: look at the ones they already publish. Careful photos and a precise, honest description attract serious buyers.
• A reasoned estimate. Beware of the highest price: a broker who promises a lot to win the mandate may then ask for successive reductions. Ask which comparable sales they are relying on.
• The mandate: open or exclusive, duration, commission, exit conditions (detailed below).

3. The questions to ask

• Which boats comparable to mine have you sold, and how long did it take?
• What is your price estimate based on?
• Open or exclusive mandate: what more do you offer in exchange for exclusivity?
• What commission, calculated how, paid by whom and when?
• How long is the mandate, and how do I get out of it?
• Where will the listing be published? Who takes the photos?
• Who handles viewings and sea trials? Who keeps the keys? Is the boat insured during trials?
• How are the deposit and the price protected: escrow account, financial guarantee?
• Will you keep me informed of viewings and offers received?

4. Reading a quote: here, the sale mandate

With a broker, the document to read closely is not a quote but the mandate. It should specify:

• The boat (name, registration, hull number), the asking price and the negotiating margin you allow.
• The type of mandate: open (you can entrust the sale to others and sell it yourself) or exclusive (a single broker for the duration of the mandate).
• The commission: how it is calculated, whether it includes all taxes, who pays it and when it becomes due.
• The duration, any renewal and the notice of termination.
• What the broker does: listings, viewings, trials, support through to the transfer.
• Any extra costs: pontoon berth, cleaning, delivery, photos.

Read two clauses carefully. The first: many mandates provide that the commission remains due if, after the mandate ends, you sell to a buyer the broker introduced to you; check how long this clause lasts. The second: under an exclusive mandate, a sale you make yourself may, depending on how the mandate is worded, entitle the broker to the commission.

5. The signs that should make you walk away

• An estimate well above the others, with no comparable sales to back it up.
• A long exclusivity, renewed automatically, with no written commitment in return.
• Fees to be paid in advance, before any sale, with no clear justification.
• Vagueness about where the buyer’s money goes.
• A refusal to tell you how many viewings have taken place and what offers have been made.
• Advice to keep quiet about a known defect: a disclosed defect is no longer a hidden one, a concealed defect may become one — see hidden defects.

A single sign does not condemn a professional; several together should send you looking elsewhere.

6. Finding a pro near your harbour

The Hullteam map of pros shows, trade by trade, where marine professionals are located: tick the trade you are interested in and move the map to your harbour. Each trade also has its own page, area by area, with each professional’s listing — all of them are gathered on the all trades page. A listing marked “Registered on Hullteam” shows a professional who has opened a Hullteam account.

7. Keeping a record of the work

The best argument you can give your broker is a proven history. Keep the Hullteam log up to date with every job, and keep the detailed invoices in the boat’s name: they are what counts as proof at resale — see which proofs count. When the time comes, the sale file brings this history together in a document the broker can show to buyers and that they check for themselves.