Why is buying a boat difficult

[LEO]

Hi,

A bit late on this one, but really all you need is a 'Bill of Sale' giving full details of boat, vendor and purchaser and importantly confirmation that the vendor is the sole owner of the boat and has good title there to, plus confirmation that it is not subject to any hire purchase agreement.

Oh and allow time for funds to clear - 'CHAPS' clearance is money well spent.

Hope that helps

Albi

[GRPCruiserman]

When I've bought a boat, I've gone along with the cash, got given the keys (and more recently the BSC etc), and driven away!! Last one I sold, he gave me the cash and drove away. Never any hassle.

 

Never spent more than £1450 personally or £3500 (my wife) on a boat though, and never dealt with a charity, so I suppose it's a bit different.

 

The boat I had the most fun with cost me £100, and about £300 to restore it. Enjoyed that boat more than ANY other. I had to take my own trailer to tow it away though!!

 

It has struck me over the years that the larger (and therefore more expensive) the boat is, the more hassle it is and therefore the more red tape, high running costs, and generally less relaxing life becomes.

 

If a boat has cost me about 4-500 pounds all in and some guy in a shiney narrow boat happens to nudge it and scrape off some of the paint I applied, then I can just get out my brush and shrug me shoulders. When the BW guy at a staircase somewhere in Yorkshire opened the wrong paddle and pushed 40 tons of narrow boat on to my Yeoman using as a fender (there were some glass cracking sounds) apart from checking for leaks afterwards it wasn't too big a deal.

 

It's like parking in a car park. My car cost me £460 so if some idiot opens there door too hard then the scratch just adds to the others already there. As long as it continues to run OK and the sunroof works, then all well and good, although it did cost me £225 to get it through the MOT this time which I thought was quite a lot, whereas if I'd spent £20000 then my paintwork would be a bit more important.

 

I have always been more worried when I've spent more time and money on a boat, although my current sailing dinghy which it now seems was made in the 1930s, not the 1940s/50s as originally thought, would upset me a lot more if anything happened to it. But then again I've had it since I was 11 years old (31 years ago) and is pretty irreplacable.

 

I suppose if I was selling something for 10s of thousands of pounds then a solictor may be a cionsideration, after all, my flat was only £31000 in 1993, and I had a solicitor for that, and you can hardly come along with £31000 odd in cash, can you!!

 

Just to put it in to perspective, when I bought my house I had a clause that forced completion within 28 days from viewing or the deal fell through. That really gets the solicitors moving quickly, and it was completed within the 28 days, so anyone considering a narrow boat purchase may wish to consider a similar clause or penalty costs could be imposed. That'd get them moving, beleive me.

[Water-rats]

Sorry if I'm being really thick but if your cheque has cleared and the boat vendor has all your hard earned money, surely the boat is yours. Solicitor or no solicitor.

Can you not just go and get it?

 

We just bought a new (to us) car and we gave the man the money and he gave us the keys and receipt. No hassle. Just as GRPcruiserman says, how hard can it be? I'm seriously hoping to buy our boat the way that GRPcruiserman says it should be. That 28 day clause is a goodie though, we shall certainly be remembering that one. Thanks very much for the post. When we had Peverill we gave boat yard a bankers draft, got given ownership cert and keys and off we went. Took around 30 mins including drinking tea and eating a penguin.

 

If the boat vendor mucks you about much more, perhaps you should consider getting your money back and getting another boat. Lots of them out there.

 

Obviously as we are currently without boat, and haven't had a boat for a while, things have changed and we have no idea what we are on about. Don't want to get flamed here.

Edited March 23, 2008 by Water-rats

[tilly]

We have been trying to finalise the purchase of our boat for two weeks and now the owner has a Solicitor involved we have done the contract sent the cheque made payable to the owner but they should of been made payable to the solicitor for them to clear. I am slowly drowning my comfort eating and drinking at at a amber level at the moment. The river is now in flood so that is going to delay matters more AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Please someone say nice things to remind me of the calming nature of being on a narrowboat

 

hi just to let you now we are in the process of buying a boat and i know where your coming from

what alot of stress i just want to get aboard now but there always something happening with the sale of my house but iam

just dreaming of the summer months and the peace and quite of living on my narrow boat hope that cheered you up a tad tilly