Why List Your Boat with Us?
Three aspects to a successful sale of your vessel:
Professional Yacht Brokers confident and knowledgeable in their products who respond quickly and accurately to all questions from buyers.
Comprehensive Marketing program including accurate evaluation of your previously owned boat, a well conceived and executed marketing plan, pricing strategy and presentation of the boat.
Possession of the skill sets needed to bring buyers and sellers together to close the sale.
And it won’t cost you a dime until we sell your boat!
How We Do It
Our fully Licensed and Bonded Professional Yacht Brokers have a long and enviable track record of getting boats sold for our clients and we will do it again FOR YOU!
Our brokers are available 7 days a week. We respond promptly to prospective buyers and with confidence about the boats we represent. We pride ourselves in not only good overall knowledge of boats, our industry and the current market condition, but on a detailed working knowledge of the specific vessels we represent.
We know that when a buyer is ready to buy, many times you only get one shot to turn an inquiry into a boat “showing”. It takes confidence in the product and some good old fashioned salesmanship to get a “prospective” buyer comfortable enough to become an “actual” buyer. And the professionals at Windswept Yacht Sales have that know-how.
We quickly and effectively respond to all inquiries about our listed boats, and if a question arises which we are unable to answer, we will always strive to get the information accurately and promptly for our boat buyers. We will not make buyers wait days to respond to an inquiry about your boat.
Comprehensive Marketing Program
We’ll help you determine the best pricing strategy and the best marketing concept for your yacht.
We will provide a “no cost” analysis of your vessel and will provide a detailed analysis of what your vessel is likely to bring at sale. We use a multitude of sources and have access to data on recorded sales of the majority of vessels sold in the US. We can help you accurately price your boat for a quick sale that will maximize the amount in your pocket at closing.
We will prepare a detailed Yacht Listing complete with high quality photos, specifications, equipment and gear. This listing becomes the basis for marketing your yacht worldwide.
Today, boats are presented “on line’. The day of print ads selling boats is long behind us. Just ask the editors of various print publications that print monthly issues showing boat after boat for sale. The quiet little secret about print advertising is that it rarely, if ever brings a buyer to a boat. What print advertising does is “build the brand” for the Brokerage and is the main vehicle brokers use to display to OTHER POTENTIAL BOAT SELLERS that they are actively looking for new boat listings.
The main internet site that presents boats to the public is Yachtworld. Yachtworld has become the International Multiple Listing Service for recreational boats, as well as commercial vessels.
Over 95% of all recreational vessels in the US ranging from 30 feet and up are sold through the Yachtworld network. Not a single alternate website can make this claim. If you are not on Yachtworld you will find it difficult to reach your potential buyer.
By listing with a Bonded and Licensed Yacht Broker and listing your boat on Yachtworld you will have access not only to the majority of buyers worldwide looking for boats like yours, but you will be part of a system that makes a highly specific search for a particular type of vessel possible without wading through pages of boats that are not even on a buyer’s wish list.
And by listing on Yachtworld, you are exposing your boat to not just the brokers at Windswept Yacht Sales but to the entire world of over 4000 cooperating yacht brokers throughout the US and the world. Windswept Yacht Sales is a cooperating broker within this global network and we routinely offer our listings to each other, giving our sellers unmatched market exposure.
When you list your boat with Windswept Yacht Sales, your boat will be displayed on a number of websites. The list below indicates our current affiliations and changes from time to time. (Only applicable websites for a particular vessel are used and not all boats are listed on all websites.)
Limited print advertising:
We periodically run print ads that feature our boat listings and promote our brand.We continually review our internet marketing strategy and adjust to changes in the marketplace.
Detailed Yachtworld Listing
Your boat will be offered with a full color multiple photo listing and a multi-page detailed description.
We offer a website posting of “Featured Yachts” which are rotated on a regular basis both on the Yachtworld and Windswept Yacht Sales web sites.
Presenting the Boat for showing to prospective Buyers
The boat business is not unlike the real estate business. You may have heard about the 90 second rule in real estate or what others call “curb appeal”. In yacht sales, we call this “dock appeal”. The same concept applies to yacht sales.
In many cases a buyer will make his decision to reject a yacht within the first 90 seconds based on the initial and immediate perception of the boat. At Windswept Yacht Sales, we will work with you to try to maximize the dock appeal of your boat and to get you beyond the initial 90 seconds.
In some cases, boat sales is a “numbers game” and the more potential buyers that see you boat the better the odds of finding your buyer. More showings increase the chance for a quick sale dramatically.
This means the boat must be in clean and presentable condition that will be evident to buyers from the many online photos we post even before they visit your boat. It also means that any defects or deficiencies must be addressed before the first buyer comes aboard to inspect the vessel. It is the old story of “we can do it now” or “we can do it after the survey” at which time, your buyer may wait until the work is complete, or he may have moved on to another boat.
And in order to maximize the number of potential buyers who will see your boat, it must be easily accessible. Geography counts. We are fortunate to live and work in an active boating area and there are many places to store your boat that are close to some of the nicest cruising grounds in America. This part of Florida regularly attracts boat buyers from around the state and around the world. If you can locate your boat for sale in an area that is easy for folks to see it (good highway access, good airport access, easy marina access, etc.) then your boat will be seen by more buyers.
In order to help our sellers locate their vessels in high traffic areas, we offer Special Rate Brokerage Slips near our office. The location of these slips makes it easy for customers to shop your boat and helps makes Windswept Yacht Sales brokerage boats a destination stop.
During the course of your listing agreement with Windswept Yacht Sales, you can expect regular communication and feedback from your broker detailing sales activity on your yacht and the condition of the overall market.
Our Buyers have come to recognize our skill in making a boat purchase easy for them. Boat buying should be a fun experience and we strive to keep the fun in the entire process.
We are present for the showing of your vessel to prospective buyers, will assist in preparing a formal offer to purchase, and will help throughout the negotiation process. We are present for the Survey and Sea Trial and will work to get the sale of your boat closed.
Once we have found a potential buyer, we work closely with buyer and seller during the process of negotiating a “Purchase and Sale Agreement”. This is the written agreement that becomes the roadmap for how the sale will proceed. And once the Agreement is signed by both parties, we work to make the process simple and smooth. We will work to satisfy any and all contingencies that must be met before the close of the sale and we will keep the progress of the sale moving forward to meet the specific dates outlined in the Purchase and Sales Agreement.
Our buyers have the confidence that when they put in an offer and accompany it with a significant deposit of earnest money, the money is held in our escrow account. They have the confidence that their funds are protected and know that they are working with licensed and bonded yacht brokers. They also have the confidence that at closing, they will have free and clear title to the vessel they are buying, with no uncertainties as to title, bank loans, liens or outstanding payoffs that need to be made prior to them receiving their vessel with clear title.
And our sellers know that when the boat is closed, there are clear funds in their account and any outstanding loans or liens are paid off on their behalf. This is all done smoothly with painstaking attention to detail, and in a transparent manner.
With our working relationships with other professionals within the industry, we are adept at recommending and arranging boat financing and boat insurance for our buyers, thereby avoiding some of the pitfalls that can derail a boat sale. And we know how to work through the survey and sea trial process to keep a boat sale on course towards a timely closing.
We have a network of boat shippers (locally and internationally) as well as skilled boat captains who routinely deliver boats of all types for our clients.
And we have good relationships with a variety of marine contractors who can help make your boat ready for showing and sale and can prepare your sold boat for the new buyer who wants the latest and greatest gear when he takes delivery of your vessel.
We have close working relationship with a number of nearby yards including Snead Island Boatworks, and Yacht Solutions at Cortez Cove Boatyard, Catamaran Boat Yard Key Largo, Hinckey Yacht and Ship and others. These yards routinely assist in the survey and short haul process, in water or “on the hard” storage, and will also effect maintenance and repairs to help get your vessel sold.
Windswept Yacht Sales participates in Boat Shows to help market your vessel. Whether you would like to have your boat featured at our trade booth in print, or would like to have your boat displayed at the show and in the water, we can make it happen and will expose your boat to many potential boat show buyers. Some of the shows that we have exhibited at are;
Miami Boat Show, St. Petersburg, FL Boat Show Fort Myers, FL Boat Show Sarasota, FL Boat Show
Your boat’s sale is just a phone call away or come and visit us at our office aboard the SV Windswept at Marina Jack in downtown Sarasota, FL. Better yet, let us come to you to see your boat firsthand with a no cost market analysis and evaluation.
Print advertising in the Internet Age
We live in a highly technical world today and “information” has become one of the cheapest and most easily obtained commodities. All a consumer needs is a computer or other handheld electronic device with internet access and he or she literally has a world of information at hand.
It is not uncommon these days for a yacht broker to talk with a prospective buyer who may know as much or more about a given yacht as the broker. With all of the blogs, consumer websites, factory websites and more on the web there is no shortage of available information. But the ability to provide reliable information is often the role and responsibility of the Professional Yacht Broker.
The yacht broker’s role is often to help a buyer sift through the myriad of information and to help a buyer find the substance and core of what is really important about boat brand A vs. boat brand B. The role of a yacht broker is often one of “consultant”, helping to determine what a boat buyer’s need are and then to assist in evaluating various vessels to determine if they meet those needs.
One of the little secrets of the brokerage business is;
PRINT ADS DO NOT SELL BOATS!
Professional and Skilled Boat Brokers Sell Boats! And they use a multitude of tools to get a boat sold. Internet search mechanism is a key to offering boats to buyers with an easy to use format and search function. But the internet alone does not sell boats.
So then why do brokers use print ads? The answer is simple. Print ads promote the Brokerage and are an important source of new listings of boats for sale. People looking to sell their boat spend a great deal of time looking at print ads to decide where to list their boats for sale. They often base their decision on where they see other similar boasts offered for sale in the brokerage ads.
Internet shopping for boats has increased dramatically every year. It is a rare occurrence when a boat sale does not originate from a listing on a web site.