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Lessons Learned from Selling our Catana 50 OC

Stephen and I are in the process of selling our Catana OC 50 Catamaran. So we thought that we would take you along on our journey of this whole process of selling the boat – the procedures, everything that we go through. Hopefully, this will be a great way for everybody else to learn from us. This is the initial stages of getting the boat ready to be listed, choosing a broker, marketing the catamaran for sale and receiving an offer. The next stage (next video) we will take you along on the survey, the negotiation process and finally the closing of the vessel, documentation etc.

Why Are We Selling?

It’s a little sad, but the reason we’re selling our Catana Ocean Class 50 is because it was always going to happen; she’s a demo boat, and it is time to order another one. As dealers of the brand in the USA, we always have a boat at our base to be shown and for demo sails but after a year of delightful sailing and several boat shows, it is finally time to move on. We wanted to tell people from our perspective as owners the process that we’re going through and why we decided to list the boat with a broker rather than selling it ourselves.

Why We Chose a Broker to Represent Us

Catana catamarans are really special performance cruising boats and is an iconic brand. We’ve done some cruising on this boat, and it’s been a joy to sail. In terms of selling it, there are a lot of options. You can do “for sale by owner” and not pay a commission, which is an option that we obviously have because we’re very experienced.

But generally, we choose to let a broker put our boats on the market. That takes the emotion out of it completely. Sellers think their boats are worth more than they are and sellers think it is worth much less and never the twain shall meet. Boat owners (including ourselves) can get very defensive and emotional about any type of criticism and something like that could potentially scuttle a sale. So in order for us to not get into that position, we prefer to work with a broker.

We picked one of our experienced brokers to represent us to sell the boat. Christine Buttigieg is an uber professional and both sellers and buyers take great confidence in her ability to handle the negotiations. The broker will put the listing together and gather all legal documents to ensure all taxes are paid and that there are no liens on the vessel. A declaration of known defects, structural damage etc. from the owner is required and then the boat will be marketed. Once an offer is made and the survey is done, the buyer will usually negotiate a reduction in price based on the survey and that’s when the brokers are really valuable to us. The back and forth can take some time and brokers can usually negotiate a reasonable outcome which keeps it completely unemotional. Stay tuned as we continue this journey of selling our beloved Mithril and check out this post where you get to do a virtual tour of the iconic Catana OC 50.