Help with costings for a newcomer to Liveaboards

[Linkous_101]

Hi,

 

I'm looking into renting out my increasingly costly property and buying a liveaboard because it has always appealed and I think it will reduce my outgoings sufficiently to allow me to have more disposable income during these lean times (or at least until property prices pick up again). I'm trying to do some costings and what is below may be a bit lacking. Can anyone guide me on areas I might be missing. The Loan is based on approx 15-20 year term and a boat circa £30-35K. The moorings are based on Central Bristol. What I would say is that the initial feasibility shows it won't mean as much of a saving as I had hoped!! (NB - Please read PerAnnum / Per Month)

 

Loan £3,600.00/£300.00

Mooring £2,500.00/£208.33

Boat Licence £524.00/£43.67

Insurance £150.00 /£12.50

Rescue Service £128.00/£10.67

Servicing £100.00 /£8.33

Blacking £100.00 /£8.33

Maintenance £300.00 /£25.00

Fuel? £0.00

Pumping Out? £0.00

 

Total £7,402.00PA Total £616.83PM

 

 

 

Thanks

[alan_fincher]

Hello,

 

Welcome.

 

Maybe a bit of a dampener, but here's a stab at some corrections....

 

Mooring £2,500.00/£208.33 Highly optimistic for a residential berth in the Bristol area, (if you can find one!).

Boat Licence £524.00/£43.67 No sure what length boat this is for, but it seems quite short for a live-aboard.

Licence and mooring fees are being increased well beyond inflation.

Insurance £150.00 /£12.50 May be more if you want proper contents cover for your life's possessions.

Rescue Service £128.00/£10.67 Yes, we'll let that one in.

Servicing £100.00 /£8.33 Only if you are self sufficient - getting someone to do it will be significantly more.

Blacking £100.00 /£8.33 Massively optimistic, even if you DIY. Needs doing every two years.

Getting the boat docked may well cost more than your estimate, before you black it.

Maintenance £300.00 /£25.00 Optimistic, even if you are a good DIYer.

Fuel? £0.00 Fuel is about 80 pence per litre now, add at least 50p per litre from Nov 1st.

Engine will use at least 1 litre per hour, probably more like 1.5 litres per hour.

Pumping Out? £0.00 £10 to £20, possibly, per pump, depending on location.

A cassette or porta potty toilet can be emptied free though.

 

Don't forget the costs at purchase.

A full survey might be around £500, on top of which you have to pay for the docking to allow the survey to be done, (maybe £150-£200 more).

 

EDIT:

Sorry, that all looks nicely formatted as I edit it, but the rotten board software strips out all multiple spaces, and makes it a right mess.

 

Hopefully you can extract my comments from the garbled mass.

 

Alan

Edited September 4, 2008 by alan_fincher

[Lady Muck]

Just to add to that: we reblack ourselves - crane out and hardstanding is about £420 in London (I checked last week). Last time we did it we used about 3 tins of blacking at £25 a tin,spent £10 in b and q on rollers and brushes and bought an angle grinder in Aldi for about £25 - so that'd be more like £520.

 

Our insurance (incl. contents)is about £300 p.a.

 

Last time I had the engine fully serviced it came to about £450.00 incl parts.

 

Make sure you budget to be able to afford price rises above inflation for mooring and license. Ours have gone up by a whopping £1200 in two years!

 

You can make boating cheaper (I know plenty of boaters that do), but it would involve quite a lifestyle change, you'd have to be prepared to do it.

[Linkous_101]

thanks Alan - I'd rather know up front than suffer a shock later so, knowledge is power - appreciate it. Looks as though I had perhaps underestimated a little. I admit to having partly based costs on some boats I had seen advertised in Bristol that come with moorings. They were in very good nick (well, ok looked in good nick!) and were newish builds (90's).

 

So it's looking like Liveaboard may not be the credit crunch bolt hole I had anticipated. It will still be cheaper than my current Mortage / Council tax / Service costs but.....not as much as I'd hoped.

 

Am I right in thinking there seem to be more permanent moorings available than, say, a year ago when I last looked into it? Are people being driven back to land?

[alan_fincher]

Am I right in thinking there seem to be more permanent moorings available than, say, a year ago when I last looked into it? Are people being driven back to land?

I'm not close enough to things to be able to answer that TBH.

 

There will be some areas of the country where obtaining moorings becomes easier for a while as new mega-marinas open for business. Some of the ones claiming to offer a lot, (and therefore charging a lot), seem to have vacancies for a long while. As the well off take up these places, unless it's with new boats, they must be creating vacancies elsewhere in most (but not all) cases.

 

Quite a few forum members are from the area you are looking at, so let's hope they chip in with local knowledge.

 

The figure of £450 for an engine service, (including parts) is an eye-opener to me. I'd hope that included more than just the usual engine and gearbox service items. A DIY job maybe uses maybe £20 to £30 of parts and £15 of oils, so it's worth learning how to do your own. I paid only about £150 to go on a very good two day course, so it's increasingly sounding like money well spent. You don't need to be that technically minded - just to have clothes you don't mind getting dirty, (perhaps I should add another tenner for soap powder and washing machine costs. )

[Linkous_101]

thanks - sound advice I'm sure.

 

The reason I'm looking now is that it seems like it might be the perfect solution for me. I'm a new homeowner but am finding costs prohibitive (I live alone and have punishing CSA costs). TBH I am at risk of repossession if I don't think creatively. I'd rather rent it out and not lose the asset. So buying a liveaboard narrowboat (something of a dream for a few years now) seems sensible. I live in Bristol but might just have to move to Reading to keep in contact with my daughter. So I could buy here (Bristol) and move the boat to Reading if I need to - Thames and Kennet Marina seem to have excellent facilities! I'm reasonably young and fit and work in a buoyant (excuse the pun!) industry so can work anywhere. It just all seems to be 'the right time' to do this! Plus, it would seem to make more sense than renting a one bedroomed flat which I think would be scarcely any cheaper (albeit less of a commitment).

[Lady Muck]

I'm not close enough to things to be able to answer that TBH.

 

There will be some areas of the country where obtaining moorings becomes easier for a while as new mega-marinas open for business. Some of the ones claiming to offer a lot, (and therefore charging a lot), seem to have vacancies for a long while. As the well off take up these places, unless it's with new boats, they must be creating vacancies elsewhere in most (but not all) cases.

 

Quite a few forum members are from the area you are looking at, so let's hope they chip in with local knowledge.

 

The figure of £450 for an engine service, (including parts) is an eye-opener to me. I'd hope that included more than just the usual engine and gearbox service items. A DIY job maybe uses maybe £20 to £30 of parts and £15 of oils, so it's worth learning how to do your own. I paid only about £150 to go on a very good two day course, so it's increasingly sounding like money well spent. You don't need to be that technically minded - just to have clothes you don't mind getting dirty, (perhaps I should add another tenner for soap powder and washing machine costs. )

 

Yeah, I forgot to mention - we did need quite a few parts! We have learnt how to do it ourselves now. We bought a pela pump too (Google it)

[alan_fincher]

There is another thread running about costs....

 

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php...c=16960&hl=

 

It's worth keeping up to date with that one too, even if some of the numbers in one are fairly different from the other.

 

Some costs are fixed, and unavoidable, (assuming you wish to be legal!). Others vary enormously based on how self sufficient you are to do jobs yourself, but also other costs depend heavily on locality (supply versus demand).

[bottle]

thanks - sound advice I'm sure.

 

The reason I'm looking now is that it seems like it might be the perfect solution for me. I'm a new homeowner but am finding costs prohibitive (I live alone and have punishing CSA costs). TBH I am at risk of repossession if I don't think creatively. I'd rather rent it out and not lose the asset. So buying a liveaboard narrowboat (something of a dream for a few years now) seems sensible. I live in Bristol but might just have to move to Reading to keep in contact with my daughter. So I could buy here (Bristol) and move the boat to Reading if I need to - Thames and Kennet Marina seem to have excellent facilities! I'm reasonably young and fit and work in a buoyant (excuse the pun!) industry so can work anywhere. It just all seems to be 'the right time' to do this! Plus, it would seem to make more sense than renting a one bedroomed flat which I think would be scarcely any cheaper (albeit less of a commitment).

 

Hi

 

Sorry to throw another couple of points:

 

I am guessing you have a mortgage, so you will need permission of the mortgage company to let the property, then it will be 'buy to let' and the charges/interest will be higher, if they give permission.

 

If you do rent it out there will also be an income tax liability but an accountant may help there.

 

If you are to be a liveaboard and not move, you will need a residential mooring and this will probably be liable for Council Tax.

[sueb]

Hi,

 

I'm looking into renting out my increasingly costly property and buying a liveaboard because it has always appealed and I think it will reduce my outgoings sufficiently to allow me to have more disposable income during these lean times (or at least until property prices pick up again). I'm trying to do some costings and what is below may be a bit lacking. Can anyone guide me on areas I might be missing. The Loan is based on approx 15-20 year term and a boat circa £30-35K. The moorings are based on Central Bristol. What I would say is that the initial feasibility shows it won't mean as much of a saving as I had hoped!! (NB - Please read PerAnnum / Per Month)

 

Loan £3,600.00/£300.00

Mooring £2,500.00/£208.33

Boat Licence £524.00/£43.67

Insurance £150.00 /£12.50

Rescue Service £128.00/£10.67

Servicing £100.00 /£8.33

Blacking £100.00 /£8.33

Maintenance £300.00 /£25.00

Fuel? £0.00

Pumping Out? £0.00

 

Total £7,402.00PA Total £616.83PM

 

 

Thanks

You don't need rescue service. Servicing you can do yourself. It sounds a sensible idea to me. Look on waterscape.com for moorings. There are some in Reading on the IDR. no security but a lot cheaper than a marina. You can check previous prices. The last one went for £700 per annum.

We let our house as a shared house.rather than let it to one person, that way we can go back & check on it when we want. It works fine.

Sue

[Linkous_101]

You don't need rescue service. Servicing you can do yourself. It sounds a sensible idea to me. Look on waterscape.com for moorings. There are some in Reading on the IDR. no security but a lot cheaper than a marina. You can check previous prices. The last one went for £700 per annum.

We let our house as a shared house.rather than let it to one person, that way we can go back & check on it when we want. It works fine.

Sue

Thanks Sue - I won't be put off by those warning me off (and I don't mean anyone here - the practical advice and reminders are greatly appreciated). I say life is for living and I'd rather try and fail than not try at all. BTW - what is the Reading IDR? I appreciate moorings like this maybe cheaper but, being a newcomer, I am confused and daunted by mooring somewhere which will not have facilities to which I have become accustomed while living on land.

[Hobson]

Some sobering figures here ..

 

I was initially shocked by Alan's projections, but then I thought about how much I used to pay (two years ago now) for a room in a shared house + bills + council tax.

 

Basically 70% of my salary ..

 

The rest went on repaying credit or loans and petrol for the bike.

 

Now I have £400 going out every month, TOPS and I live very comfortably and have £50 a month petrol money to blow just exploring. Which means I can get by part time if I have to, usually not having to work for several months at a time ..

 

It ain't bad. NB's can be extremely expensive, but you just have to learn to DIY or work longer hours, which defeats the point of an alternative lifestyle in my opinion.

 

- Hobbs

[Linkous_101]

Hobson - thanks. I understand it's a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question. But it sounds like you are making it work. When you say that NB's can be very expensive I think you mean if/when they go wrong then a new engine / hull repair etc...can cost a small fortune. But - I have these risks already with a property (roof / boiler / mains etc...). So it sounds likes you have hammered your outgoings. If you don't mind me asking, how did you finance? Bank Loan or Marine Mortgage?

[Lady Muck]

It's the gas and electric where we save the money - plus free wood - we're close to industrial estates. There are many fly tipped palletts, we just move the boat up there and fill the roof up. Free heating!

 

I'm not keen enough to totally heat my boat with free wood but I know many boaters who do. My gas costs me £80 -£100 a year and my electricity is about 90p a week in high summer and £5 a week in midwinter. I was lucky to inherit a wind genny and solar panels - they are very expenisve to buy.

 

Diesel is going up though - but last time we cruised my friends saw me go white when I saw how much it was at the pump - then they paid for it!

[sueb]

Thanks Sue - I won't be put off by those warning me off (and I don't mean anyone here - the practical advice and reminders are greatly appreciated). I say life is for living and I'd rather try and fail than not try at all. BTW - what is the Reading IDR? I appreciate moorings like this maybe cheaper but, being a newcomer, I am confused and daunted by mooring somewhere which will not have facilities to which I have become accustomed while living on land.

IDR is the ring road. There are no facilities but it does show the difference in costs. Some people are prepared to rough it more than others.

Good luck

Sue

[Tim Doran]

The price of moorings are in my view quite expensive. I am a CCer who lives between Bath and Trowbridge and so far have had no problems. There are lots of services within an easy walk, car or bike ride away. Plus you save 2.5k which is a lot of petrol or holiday time.

 

The servicing is in many respects easier than servicing a car. There are no extra bits - brakes, wipers, suspension etc. I do all my own servicing and do not find it a problem. Lots of the other boaters were very helpful when i started a year ago. Also living on the cut is not as isolated as you would think. On the K&A around there is a thriving community of really nice people.

 

Tim

[wollix]

There is the alternative of not buying but renting per month off a company like "Escape the Ratrace" which saves the capital upfront

I would have a look at www.etrr.co.uk if you are interested