The "happy days" in the narrowboat building game seem to have come to an end and maybe it's time for those looking into buying new narrowboats to consider if they are becoming a bad proposition.

For various reasons the price of new boats increased rapidly over the last six years or so and this accompanied by ever increasing operating costs seems to have slowed the new build market to a crawl. In previous years narrowboats have maintained there values relatively well but two or three used boats that I know of this year have failed to sell for anything like a realistic value.

This was not helped by the availability of brand new imported narrowboats of an high quality for the same expected prices brand new, but I think the down turn in values is more deep routed.

Narrowboating was traditionally a recreational hobby and in the bigger marine picture was maybe considered a "poor mans" hobby but with the going rate for a new 57' boat probably now being any ware between £75-100k plus that is now laughable! The number of potential customers with that kind of money to sink into a "hobby" must surely be few and far between.

With the loss of the recreational market builders turned to the residential market but this is a very two tier market split between those driven by the necessity of what they perceived cheap housing that are driven by cost to DIY sailaway and lined out market or the more affluent retiring to live the dream brigade who often with no knowledge of the waterways or boats throw vast sums of money into new builds only to have their eyes opened to the reality of the dream with the boats ending up on the market within a couple of years.

The residential narrowboat market was flawed by the narrowboat itself while the builder and magazines portray the dream in glossy colour, all but a few will find a narrowboat the ideal accommodation, yes you can build a very luxurious narrowboat but the reality and restrictions of the dimensions can only be camouflaged no more.

A single person or couple with the intension of staying that way can live in some resemblance of land based normality but for all but the most adaptive family groups the going is going to be hard and get more so as the children grow.

Bearing all of this in mind I think we can see where the reality of your super expensive new narrowboat might be in a few years if you choose to sell!

So before handing over your deposit and picking the colour you really do need to consider your position now and what it is likely to be in the future.

So what are all the narrowboat builders going to do without customers?

Well time will tell! The future looks to be most certainly a residential one rather than a recreational one so they will have to find a niche in that market.

Those that don't or can't will like those before just become another interesting memory in those old magazines we all find in a forgotten drawer from time to time.