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The buying process and timescale


rawsondsr

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Just wondering what the 'normal' procedure and timescale would be at a broker, when things get done, how long for a survey, are we talking a week or two or a month or two?

I realise its 'how long is a piece of string', but a generalisation is ok

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From putting in the offer to picking up the boat was four weeks in our case. Two of which we were on holiday.

This was on a stock boat so there was work to be done which was picked up by the survey and the boat was fully polished, surveyed and valeted. 

It can be a quicker process but didn't need to be in our case.

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It depends on circumstances. I looked at this boat at 11 am on tuesday morning, paid for it in full at 11.20 and went back to pick it up on friday because I was busy the previous 3 days.

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It can be as simple and quick as you want it to be

Best case - turn up with a carrier bag (Aldi are favourite) of cash, pay and take it away, Time less than 1 hour. This method is employed by several forumites.

Worst case - Turn up, kick tyres, go home, think about it, phone broker a few weeks later to make an offer and find its been sold, repeat a few times and a year has gone by. Change tactics and decide to make an offer subject to survey, your chosen surveyor is very busy and cannot 'do' your survey for 8 weeks, does survey and find some problems, you start to re-negotiate with the vendor and the weeks slowly pass by, its now 18 month since you decide to buy a boat - finally seller says yes, you go to the bank, get your (Aldi) carrier bag full of cash and go and pay for it. This method is normally employed by newcomers.

 

By the time you get to your 3rd or 4th boat you will have adapted the above to 'somewhere in the middle'.

 

It will take however long you want it to take.

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4 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

It depends on circumstances. I looked at this boat at 11 am on tuesday morning, paid for it in full at 11.20 and went back to pick it up on friday because I was busy the previous 3 days.

That's a quick surveyor :P

4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

It can be as simple and quick as you want it to be

Best case - turn up with a carrier bag (Aldi are favourite) of cash, pay and take it away, Time less than 1 hour. This method is employed by several forumites.

Worst case - Turn up, kick tyres, go home, think about it, phone broker a few weeks later to make an offer and find its been sold, repeat a few times and a year has gone by. Change tactics and decide to make an offer subject to survey, your chosen surveyor is very busy and cannot 'do' your survey for 8 weeks, does survey and find some problems, you start to re-negotiate with the vendor and the weeks slowly pass by, its now 18 month since you decide to buy a boat - finally seller says yes, you go to the bank, get your (Aldi) carrier bag full of cash and go and pay for it. This method is normally employed by newcomers.

 

By the time you get to your 3rd or 4th boat you will have adapted the above to 'somewhere in the middle'.

 

It will take however long you want it to take.

Wait ten days for the money-laundering checks from the broker ...

It's not a private sale.  Do brokers usually accept cash?

 

Edited by TheBiscuits
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Just now, TheBiscuits said:

That's a quick surveyor :P

Wait ten days for the money-laundering checks from the broker ...

It's not a private sale.  Do brokers usually accept cash?

 

If not you can always pay on your debit card - the last cruiser I bought the broker took £40,000 on debit card and the balance in cash.

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1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

That's a quick surveyor :P

Wait ten days for the money-laundering checks from the broker ...

It's not a private sale.  Do brokers usually accept cash?

 

You can pay a maximum of £8k in cash at a brokerage.

Same for car dealers etc. To avoid money laundering.

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Just now, Naughty Cal said:

You can pay a maximum of £8k in cash at a brokerage.

Same for car dealers etc. To avoid money laundering.

Makes sense on the £10k rule.

They can argue about the extra grand and still be under the limit.

I have only ever done full price on debit card or 10% deposit on debit card and balance on bank transfer with brokers.

I have never yet found a private seller that did not want Alan's Aldi bag though - they all seem to be very patriotic and like collecting pictures of Her Majesty!

 

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FYI

Our latest buying experience (Feb 2018) view Thursday, offer accepted Friday, survey Monday completed purchase Wednesday. 

Our latest sales experience (Sept 2017) Day 1 on sale, viewed by one person full ask offer accepted day 3, survey day 14'ish, completion day 21'ish.

Surveys are usually 2-3 weeks ahead, completion is very often the same week - realistically all can be done in a month.

 

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19 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

That's a quick surveyor :P

 

 

Where does anything say you have to have a survey done?

As others have pointed out the buyer is the one creating the delays, usually. A seller is usually delighted to find that rare thing, a buyer who just says "I'll buy it" and whips out his debit card. 

 

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
To sort out my quotes!
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2 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Where does anything say you have to have a survey done?

As others have pointed out the buyer is the one creating the delays, usually. A seller is usually delighted to find that rare thing, a buyer who just says "I'll buy it" and whips out his debit card. 

We bought Hampton on a whim. I had no intention of buying a second boat because still we were still restoring Owl. However, josher butties don’t come up very often. A week later it was ours. Didn’t bother with a survey – I knew it needed lots of work doing.

When we sold the motor the chap saw it on the Saturday and six days later the money was in the bank.

In the case of the butty there was no paperwork – just a handshake. In the case of the motor, a handshake and a simple Bill of Sale when the transaction was completed.

Buying and selling boats doesn’t have to be a long drawn out process.

Edited by koukouvagia
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I would say the biggest single factor will be whether you decide to survey, and, if so, availability of craning/docking/slipping facilities to align with availability of a surveyor of your choice.

If buying from a broker that can easily crane or dock using its own facilities it will probably be quicker than if there is no nearby facility, and you have to negotiate with vendor where and how the boat gets taken out the water.

If you are not surveying, (or boat is currently "on the hard" anyway), there is no reason for it to take very long at all, but if you are it could easily take a month, I would say.

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14 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

I would say the biggest single factor will be whether you decide to survey, and, if so, availability of craning/docking/slipping facilities to align with availability of a surveyor of your choice.

If buying from a broker that can easily crane or dock using its own facilities it will probably be quicker than if there is no nearby facility, and you have to negotiate with vendor where and how the boat gets taken out the water.

If you are not surveying, (or boat is currently "on the hard" anyway), there is no reason for it to take very long at all, but if you are it could easily take a month, I would say.

Agree with Alan. We bought last spring and it took 5 weeks. Almost a month to get a lift out and surveyor coordinated, then the vendor was away. With no survey, no reason to get it done in days. Be prepared to ring around to find a surveyor who will do it when YOU want , not him. Our surveyor got a grand knocked off the price and with peace of mind the boat sounds sound (!), it was worth the hassle but did delay us a month.

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The whole 'survey' thing strikes me as being driven by well off middle class folk entering the world of narrow boating and expecting the second biggets purchase of their life to look very much like their largest purchase. Hence the expectation of a survey. 

Similarly, newbies seem somewhat taken aback that there is no formal 'boat registry' to prove ownership of a narrow boat. 

The thought of just saying "I'll buy it" then immediately handing over £60k in return for a boat and a hand written scrap of paper as a receipt seems all wrong. A survey satisfies the need to have a 'big deal' made out of it.

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54 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

The whole 'survey' thing strikes me as being driven by well off middle class folk entering the world of narrow boating and expecting the second biggets purchase of their life to look very much like their largest purchase. Hence the expectation of a survey. 

Similarly, newbies seem somewhat taken aback that there is no formal 'boat registry' to prove ownership of a narrow boat. 

The thought of just saying "I'll buy it" then immediately handing over £60k in return for a boat and a hand written scrap of paper as a receipt seems all wrong. A survey satisfies the need to have a 'big deal' made out of it.

I am not so sure of this.

We 'knew'  boats from having bought a grp one both second hand and new and seen lots of friends boats grp boats (and the new one cost 3 times the price of our NB). A lot had significant problems due to design and construction. When we bought our NB last year we knew nothing of steel boats so thought it worth taking the punt of a surveyor in case there was something very major wrong with the hull. We also gambled that as it was 15 years old he would find stuff that could reduce the price....he did....so we saved a little bit.  I think if we got a different boat now, I would not do a survey as I understand where the issues lie on steel boats....something I didnt know a year ago.

You may well be right on the 'boat registry' as that is really important for lumpy water boats.

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I saw our boat on a brokers site on the Sunday and bought it the following Saturday. Mind you we knew the seller (a friend from Canada) and we had seen the boat a couple of years before 

In that week emails flew across the pond and when we looked over the boat I phoned our friend in Canada with our offer which he accepted and told us the boat was now ours and we set off in her on the Sunday 

We paid by BACS when we got a WiFi signal in pubs 

This was the third boat we bought without a survey! 

Haggis 

 

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5 hours ago, Dr Bob said:

Agree with Alan. We bought last spring and it took 5 weeks. Almost a month to get a lift out and surveyor coordinated, then the vendor was away. With no survey, no reason to get it done in days. Be prepared to ring around to find a surveyor who will do it when YOU want , not him. Our surveyor got a grand knocked off the price and with peace of mind the boat sounds sound (!), it was worth the hassle but did delay us a month.

I got ten grand knocked off the asking price of mine without a survey even though it was in good order. Cash, no survey and pay today were the words that swung that for me.

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18 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

If not you can always pay on your debit card - the last cruiser I bought the broker took £40,000 on debit card and the balance in cash.

40K plus balance! Crikey, have you bought the QE2?

I got my boat a bit below the asking price for completing quickly without a survey. Had a hull survey later for comprehensive insurance because the insurance company would only cover third party only on a 1978 boat. 

Happily,the survey was OK.

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