WAITING TO POUNCE

The sailboat brokerage market is opening up a bit for buyers who are prepared

- KIM KÁVIN

Mark Pillsbury can see the change in his email inbox. The longtime editor for Cruising World has been looking to M buy a brokerage sailboat for the past year, maybe year and a half, but the pickings have been slim. Buyers scooped up pretty much anything that could float during the pandemic. Even when Pillsbury took the time to input his criteria for an online brokerage database, he never got a single email alert about a matching listing.

"Now, it's maybe three or four boats a week that get listed and meet the criteria I put in," Pillsbury said in late March. "It's definitely opening up a little bit, but you can look at the pictures and then get to the boat, and you think, Were those really pictures of this boat?"

His experience mirrors what numerous brokers and sailors say they're seeing in the marketplace for brokerage sailboatsespecially popular, sought-after models. The overall number of available boats is starting to increase, with more boats for sale now than there were just six or eight months ago.

The quality of those boats, though, can vary, and savvy buyers are still waiting in the wings to make fast offers on well-maintained, right-priced vessels.

"Last year, 2022, we sold about 18 boats before they even listed, which is unheard of," says Josh McLean, president of David Walters Yachts in Annapolis, Maryland. "If you look at certain models, like a Hylas 54 or a Hylas 49-if I had a listing on a Hylas 49, the boat had multiple offers before it even hit the market. There are still certain boats where that's true today because there's been such a lack of inventory. I have a list of people waiting to buy one as soon as it becomes available."