Market Notes.
Who pays, who benefits and where the incentives differ. Notes on pricing, listings, buyers, owners and the digital side of yacht sales, written from Dubai.
Why a buyer does not care about your website traffic
Twelve hundred visitors is a number for the owner meeting. The buyer never sees it, and would not change their offer by a euro if they did.
The yacht website that nobody updates
Launch day gets the attention. The presentation a buyer opens in month seven is the one that decides whether they call, and by then it usually describes a different yacht.
Can AI actually help yacht brokers?
Yes, in three places that are unglamorous. No, in the places the sales pitches promise. The difference is whether the tool is working from recorded facts or from the sound of a yacht.
What Sellers Often Learn Too Late
By the time an owner sees how the market reads the listing, it has often been live for six to twelve months. Most of that loss is avoidable with an honest read at the start.
Dubai and the Gulf as a Serious Yacht Market
For years the Gulf was called an emerging yachting region. From where I sit in Dubai, that description no longer fits. It is a working market with its own rhythm.
The Price Drop Reality in the Yacht Market
A price drop is meant to bring buyers back to the table. More often it tells them the first number was wrong and invites them to wait.
Why More Exposure Does Not Fix a Weak Yacht Listing
Two more portals and a new headline feel like action. If the yacht sits in the wrong place within its segment, they mostly show the problem to more people.
Yacht buyer's agent vs yacht advisor vs yacht broker
Broker, central agent, buyer's agent, advisor, concierge. Five titles used loosely around one sale. Here is what each one does, who pays them and where they meet.
Yacht Survey Before Purchase
A pre-purchase survey is the technical examination of a yacht before you complete. Used well, it gives buyer, owner and both brokers one shared set of facts to settle the deal on.
Why a yacht needs its own sales microsite
One website for one yacht gives the broker's link somewhere clean to land, and keeps price, location and photos current for every buyer who saved the address.
Why Yachts Stay on the Market Too Long
Long listings are usually a price, presentation, documents or timing problem. Each leaves traces, and a broker and owner who read them together can act before another season passes.
Why Yacht Sales Fail Before the First Buyer Calls
Most yacht sales do not fail at the negotiation table. They fail earlier, when the owner's expectation, the market's reading and the listing's presentation drift apart.
Why Independent Yacht Advice Matters
A written second read on price and presentation that the broker can put on the table. Most useful before the hard conversation with the owner.
What to Do When a Yacht Is Not Selling
Keep the broker, change the conditions. A practical sequence for owners and central agents: read the segment, the price history and the feedback, then agree one commercial action.
What to Check Before Making an Offer on a Yacht
An offer commits time, fees and goodwill on both sides. The checks that belong before it rarely take long, and they make your offer far easier for the central agent to take seriously.
What a yacht sales website should contain
What a qualified buyer needs when a broker's link opens on a phone: the yacht, the facts, the plans and the broker's number, all current.
What Does a Yacht Advisor Do?
A yacht advisor reads the market around one yacht and writes it down. For owners, for buyers, and in my work mostly for the broker running the sale.
How to Negotiate a Yacht Purchase
Good yacht negotiations are prepared before the first offer. A buyer who arrives with comparables, a clear brief and a walk away point is easier to deal with, and usually gets a fairer deal.
How Yacht Broker Commission Works
Who pays it, how it is shared between brokers, and what months of work it covers before a yacht changes hands.
Common Mistakes When Buying a Yacht
The expensive mistakes are ordinary ones, repeated across very different yachts and buyers. Spotting them early costs little and makes you the buyer every broker wants to work with.
Boat asking price vs selling price: why the asking price is not market value
An asking price is what the owner hopes the market will pay. Market value is what comparable yachts actually sell for. Your broker helps you read the gap between the two.
Have a market question?
Analytical and editorial enquiries welcome. If you are a journalist, say so and I will reply with the deadline in mind.