Advice for a Narrowboat ‘business’ idea (UK)

[Barge]

Hello,

I just wanted to get your thoughts and some some advice about a potential 'business' idea.

I am going away for around 6 months at the start of 2020 and was planning on moving onto a Narrowboat when I got back, but I got talking to somebody recently has just sold a Narrowboat in London. Basically; they purchased their boat in Manchester, brought it down to London, lived on it for about a year and then sold it in London for almost double what they originally paid.

Which gave me this idea of a potential business to run along side my Freelance Graphic Design work.

Purchasing Canal boats up North, refurbishing them a little and then taking them down to London to sell. Maybe doing this 2 or 3 times a year?

I have been trying to look into it a little online but without speaking to people with experience buying and selling Narrowboats I am struggling to find the right answers.

What are your thoughts? Could this work?

 

Has anyone got any experience doing this? Or, buying and selling canal boats in general?

 

Say I purchased a Canal boat for around £20,000, spend a couple of grand refurbishing it, and then a few weeks driving it down to London. Would there be potential to make a decent amount of money doing this?

 

Is there typically a BIG difference in the prices of canal boats in London compared to Manchester / up north?
 

Is the demand for canal boats in London still quite high?
 

Any potential problems that I may face?

It won’t be until 2021 that was looking to do this, so I just wanted to spend the next year or so researching into it because it seems like it could be a great way to make money along side my freelance graphic design, and spend time living on the canals. I just wanted to get some initial thoughts from people with experience doing this.

Thanks!

[mrsmelly]

People do it just the same as many people buy delapidated houses, refurb them and sell them on or " Flip them " thus keeping prices high for the less well off. however I digress. You can do it or should I say not being funny I could and some others could but you need a lot of experience in boats. The differing types/qualities/fit outs etc etc etc are many and so are the known pitfalls of hull corrosion so much knowledge is needed or money could be lost from day one.

[Richard10002]

1 minute ago, mrsmelly said:

People do it just the same as many people buy delapidated houses, refurb them and sell them on or " Flip them " thus keeping prices high for the less well off. however I digress.

You might digress, but how on earth does "buying something in poor condition, improving it to add value, then selling it at market value for a profit" keep prices high for the less well off.... It is how the world works in almost every area such that your analogy suggests that nobody should do anything to create or add value, as it would keep prices high for the less well off.

 

????

[Alan de Enfield]

I was about to say the same :

 

Yes it can be done, but can you do it ?

 

Without a few years (20 or 30 would be a good start) experience of boats you stand a great risk of buying a 'lemon' particularly is you are looking at the bottom end of the market (£20k)

Having a survey of any vessel you are looking at will cost yous somewhere in the order of £1000, if the surveyor finds problems then you need to look for another one, do this a few times and you have 'wasted' much of your capital.

 

The more expensive boat you buy, the better condition it is in, the younger it is means you have more chance of making a profit as they will need less spending on them to get them to 'London Standards'

 

I have bought / sold 18 boats over the years and have only lost money on one of them.

[system 4-50]

Take a target of 3 per year.  That's a lot of leg work to find and acquire 3 boats at around the right price before somebody else realises they are good.  Then you need good conditions for doing them up.  If your doing up includes painting then you are heavily dependant on the weather.  If it does not then that constrains your choice of boat even further.  How much are you going to spend in renovation? One of my relatives went bankrupt by not noticing that her investment in improvements took her over the possible resale value of her property.  You will need to keep a very tight rein on costs.  What is the maximum resale value you can achieve over your purchase? If you buy near the bottom (£20K) there is an absolute upper limit to the realisable value of the boat no matter how good your renovation is, £30K?  After costs, what is the abs max realisable profit per boat, £5K??  £15K per year when all goes perfectly?  And if you encounter one duff engine needing replacement and a couple of other nasties, perhaps a profit of £5K?  If however you have expertise in assessing old boats, joinery or other suitable skills, and/or a good lowcost boatyard or mooring for doing the work in, then the situation might be better.  You need to look around and see if large numbers of other people are doing this good thing and, more difficult, see if they are actually making any money on it.  It is easy to feel good just after you've made a sale, without having done a full accounting. 

Thats all general waffle.  Where will you live between selling the boat you are presumably living on and buying another?  Your friend doubled their money - how much was that?  Twice peanuts is still peanuts.  My feeling is that while what you want to do is not impossible, only a very few have the persistance to make a continuing success of it.  At any time C&RT or local authorities may take steps which affect the London market. 

If you go for it, good luck and do let us know how you get on!

[Guest]

I've just bought a boat outside London and am paying to have it driven down/craned in (cost less than 2k but not from as far afield are you're thinking of). It has also been blacked, again, less than 2k but a fair amount of your budget... I had two surveyed and so again, cost less than 2k but a fair bit more than 1k. Plus I travelled out of London for each at some cost...

 

In London the boat (newly blacked and surveyed and with a couple of strings of twinkly lights added for say 15quid) could (possibly) sell for 5k more than I bought it for. But I've spent very close to that getting it here (and even if you were steering yours down that is cruising time you're not doing paid graphics work during and diesel etc so has to be valued at something) .

 

I've bought a couple of boats recently so have a reasonably good idea of the current market in my price/length/beam range.

 

There might well be a larger percentage margin on shorter/cheaper/wider boats that aren't already largely white/grey inside. But even people with much smaller budgets are routinely recommended to get (hull) surveys done - join yourself to any London Facebook group to see examples of this. So, I'd think you'd probably need rather more investment to increase the value significantly once you'd got over then initial 'gain' from location/interior colour scheme.

 

Edited to add: what there is a BIG demand for in London is moorings. Most people with a healthy budget can travel/pay for boat delivery and those without a healthy budget are more likely to have the time to travel AND steer their own boat down. Obviously there are exceptions. If you can get your 'done up' boat onto a mooring within a reasonable distance of London/buy a boat to do up on such a mooring you might want to see if those figures look more healthy. There were a couple I saw on quite desirable moorings which would probably have gone quicker with a not-too-different boat.

Edited December 16, 2019 by TheMenagerieAfloat

[LadyG]

Any business, to be successful requires some knowledge.

[Sea Dog]

8 hours ago, Barge said:

It won’t be until 2021 that was looking to do this,

2021?  Oh dear, I hope no-one else thinks of it before you get to make your fortune!

[MtB]

10 hours ago, Barge said:

Say I purchased a Canal boat for around £20,000, spend a couple of grand refurbishing it, and then a few weeks driving it down to London. Would there be potential to make a decent amount of money doing this?

 

I'd say yes, and there are plenty of sharp, experienced and well informed people doing it already. Are you just as good? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Laurie Booth]

11 hours ago, Barge said:

Hello,

I just wanted to get your thoughts and some some advice about a potential 'business' idea.

I am going away for around 6 months at the start of 2020 and was planning on moving onto a Narrowboat when I got back, but I got talking to somebody recently has just sold a Narrowboat in London. Basically; they purchased their boat in Manchester, brought it down to London, lived on it for about a year and then sold it in London for almost double what they originally paid.

Which gave me this idea of a potential business to run along side my Freelance Graphic Design work.

Purchasing Canal boats up North, refurbishing them a little and then taking them down to London to sell. Maybe doing this 2 or 3 times a year?

I have been trying to look into it a little online but without speaking to people with experience buying and selling Narrowboats I am struggling to find the right answers.

What are your thoughts? Could this work?

 

Has anyone got any experience doing this? Or, buying and selling canal boats in general?

 

Say I purchased a Canal boat for around £20,000, spend a couple of grand refurbishing it, and then a few weeks driving it down to London. Would there be potential to make a decent amount of money doing this?

 

Is there typically a BIG difference in the prices of canal boats in London compared to Manchester / up north?
 

Is the demand for canal boats in London still quite high?
 

Any potential problems that I may face?

It won’t be until 2021 that was looking to do this, so I just wanted to spend the next year or so researching into it because it seems like it could be a great way to make money along side my freelance graphic design, and spend time living on the canals. I just wanted to get some initial thoughts from people with experience doing this.

Thanks!

A friend of mine buys Dutch barges in Holland and brings them to the UK, tarts them up and sells them.

[blackrose]

It can take months to sell a boat. What will you do with them once you get them to London? Just leave them moored up somewhere on the towpath while you advertise them on Apollo duck? You'll spend so much time making sure they're not broken into and moving them around to avoid overstaying that any potential profit won't be worth your time. Plus I'm not really convinced that a boat without a transferrable mooring is worth significantly more if it happens to be floating around London than anywhere else in the country.

[Boaty Jo]

Best sell it with a disclaimer...

'If this boat blows up and destroys neighbouring boats on the over-crowded Regents Canal because the doer upper didn't know what he was doing, it's your own fault.'

[Victor Vectis]

20 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

People do it just the same as many people buy delapidated houses, refurb them and sell them on or " Flip them " thus keeping prices high for the less well off. however I digress. You can do it or should I say not being funny I could and some others could but you need a lot of experience in boats. The differing types/qualities/fit outs etc etc etc are many and so are the known pitfalls of hull corrosion so much knowledge is needed or money could be lost from day one.

Shock!

Horror!!

 

Socialism warning!!!

 

?

 

[Barge]

Thanks for the advice everyone!!!

Seems like there could be a potential to make a decent bit of money doing this, but not nearly as much as I had presumed. So it's not really worth the time and investment right now, especially with no 'experience in boats'.

Probably best to stick to the Graphic Design for now, get myself a narrowboat to live on and look into to doing this as a way to make some extra cash/kill some time when i retire.

If anyone else has any thoughts or advice please continue comment though because it's still all very useful

Thanks

[Boater Sam]

This relocation selling has been done in the motor trade for as long as I can remember but now with the internet and the ease of shifting the stock around it is not worthwhile anymore.

[roland elsdon]

It started in 1984 ish and has continued to the present day. We knew people who were doing just that then. Part of our decision to move off a very desirable Ricky mooring was the volume coming down south.

im sure it will have stopped by now.

[MtB]

23 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

and sell them on or " Flip them "

 

Point of Order M'Lud...

 

"Flipping" a property has a very specific meaning and rarely happens here in the UK. 'Flipping" here in the UK is highly risky. It is where you exchange contracts to buy a house, and before completion date you find a buyer for it at a higher price than you are buying it for, and enter into a contract to sell it before you actually paid for it. 

 

It's risky as the chances of your buyer failing to exchange contracts before your completion date arrives is very high, but if you manage it you get to take the profit on the deal whilst only putting up a relatively small sum being the deposit on exchange. If you fail to get your buyer to exchange in time, then you have to complete and pay the purchase price including the stamp duty.

 

The EXTRA 3% stamp duty you have to pay when buying a house if it is not a replacement for your previous main residence has been a major dampener on the business of buying a dump of a house to renovate to sell on, tilting the market heavily in favour of first time buyers. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Mike the Boilerman
Add a bit

[Richard10002]

3 hours ago, Victor Vectis said:

Shock!

Horror!!

 

Socialism warning!!!

 

?

 

Which is strange, given that he is a right wing Tory to his bones  

[PeterF]

There was an article in Waterways World a month or two back on this very subject, they lived on the boats as they did them up iirc. Find a copy, you could always contact them to discuss their experience.

[restlessnomad]

8 hours ago, Barge said:

Thanks for the advice everyone!!!

Seems like there could be a potential to make a decent bit of money doing this, but not nearly as much as I had presumed. So it's not really worth the time and investment right now, especially with no 'experience in boats'.

Probably best to stick to the Graphic Design for now, get myself a narrowboat to live on and look into to doing this as a way to make some extra cash/kill some time when i retire.

If anyone else has any thoughts or advice please continue comment though because it's still all very useful

Thanks

winter is a good time to buy if you want get discount, try doing as much research as possible, buy around january and sell in march / april. buy one in which you can live if you dont get a good sale.

warning: most people here know about boats more than me because I never had one.

[zenataomm]

I'm of the opinion the flaw in this is the view "I'll do it in my spare time" It demonstrates a lack of forethought around timescales, working on a boat tied to the towpath without amenities, living rough and working hard, the market and the principles of boat buying etc.

 

It reminds me of when I went into the licensed trade in the early 80s, they used to say .....

 

"You know I'd love to retire and run a pub!"