Best time to buy? Before or after Miami Show?

I am in the market for a SF but making low offers. The true bottom will come as dealers go broke and their flooring banks sell out the boat. New boats are currently available at or below cost especially 07 models. When the market recovers though there will be pods available for the bigger boats which will depress the market for shaft driven boats, esp. in the 45-60 range.

I would expect '07 models to be cheap, they're already 2 years old. Pods make up a small percentage of all of the propulsion systems sold still even on the under 45' range. I don't expect PODS to take over the SF market by any means in the next two years. Cabo has 1 boat with pods made, Riviera has only two that I know of. There are not that many with pods being sold or made....... a few here and there......

I have seen a surge of buyers and seatrials in the past week or so.......much more activity then in January, but still off compared to two years ago or even a year ago.

The only way you will know is to make offers!

After talking with some dealers, sellers and buyers I'm wondering if the pre-owned market has bottomed out. What I'm hearing is that sellers are still willing to chop off a few bucks for an all cash deal, especially if it comes before the spring dockage deadline, but otherwise they're saying they'll just hang on till the market comes up even if that's 2010. What are others hearing?

Not true down here. Yeah some people have gotten out already, and there are others that don't NEED to give their boat away. BUT, there are lots and lots of REPO's still popping up which is keeping prices down and boats for sale. National Liquidators are still repo'ing tons of them, and they're place is so stacked you cannot even walk around. Granted they do absolutely nothing to their repo's, not even wash them, so the longer they sit there the worse and worse they look and get. I've also seen owner's doing a lot of trading lately (the ones that don't NEED to sell), trading one boat towards the one they want used for used and stuff......

That explains why owners and brokers aren't trying to compete on price for pre-owns. They can't compete with repos without going broke. Makes more sense just to pull out of the market until that stuff is gone which may well take till mid 2010.

The escalating cost of holding would dictate that most motivated sellers will drop their price and sell now. Why prolong the cash drain if you're not using the boat?

With most of the existing notes at a fairly low APR and the very real possibility of lowered dock fees vs; the amount lost by meeting the bottom feeders and competing with repos it makes more sense to enjoy the boat or even mothball it for another year unless you invested with Bernie, in which case your boat is probably one of those Capt. J mentioned. Plus, the DJ is moving up (at least for now).

When I see on the hard storage at 12.50 ft, I figure these Marinas either have mega customers or have their head in the sand. In the Keys at Holiday Isle Marina, (in CH 11) very few boats at the dock and still trying to get 3.50 Ft per day, just nuts !!