Tips for Selling Your Boat on eBay

November 11, 2005
By David Bryant

eBay is becoming an ever popular venue for people wanting to sell their boat. Unfortunately, sellers often miss key points when selling their boat. By following these steps, you will increase your chances of selling your boat successfully and achieving maximum value for it.

• Photos, photos, photos. The number one issue that will affect the outcome of your auction is the photos. The first thing buyers are going to look at are the photos. Anybody can exaggerate in the description of their boat, but exaggerating in the photographs is a lot harder. Do not even bother listing your boat on eBay if you cannot provide 10 or more pictures. If you don’t own a digital camera, ask a friend. In this day and age, everybody knows somebody who owns a digital camera.
  Take pictures of everything. This includes instrument panels, the shower, the inside of the fridge…everything! You’ll be surprised how many times you get asked for additional photographs of such and such bidders throughout the auction.
  
  
  
  Screen shot of a search for "Bayliner" on eBay Motors
  
• List your phone number. It always baffles me why people do not list their phone numbers when selling their boat on eBay. Just because this is the internet, it doesn’t mean all communication should be done through email. A lot the people who are going to be interested in bidding on your boat are still skeptical of email and the internet in general; it eases them to be able to speak to a live person. I’ve sold dozens of boats on eBay and every time the eventual buyer has contacted me by telephone before the auction’s close.
  
• Give bidders the opportunity to view the boat in person. Most of the people who will be seriously considering bidding on your boat will be local, so why not give them the opportunity to view the boat in person? While lots of photos and a good description are adequate substitutes for viewing the boat in person, nothing beats the seeing the boat live. Include something along the lines of the following “I encourage all bidders to view this boat in person in ‘city, state’. Please call me for instructions”.
  Again, a lot of your potential audience will be nervous about bidding on a boat they have never actually seen. Viewing it in person will remove any apprehension. I’ve found that most of the people who do view in person any of the boats I list on eBay make a serious push (i.e. a bid!) for the boat.
  
• Don’t leave out important information even if it may be negative. If you “forget” to mention something as pertinent as the entire floor being rotted and needing replacing or that all of the windows leak it will only lead to you having a negative experience on eBay. If the buyer encounters any serious surprises he will likely refuse to complete the sale. Be as honest as possible and you won’t have any problems.
  
• If you’re going to have a reserve on your auction, start your auction at $1. Starting the auction at $1 will attract significant attention to your auction opposed to a high starting bid that may immediately put-off bidders. Having a high starting bid is fine if there is no reserve, but do not use it in reserved auctions.
  I recommend starting all of your auctions at $1, whether they are reserved or not, simply for the fact you will almost certainly attract a lot of watchers of your auction. Even if your auction doesn’t meet the reserve, you may get a lot of emails and phone calls after the auction from people wanting to make you an offer.
  If you need to sell your boat as quickly as possible and time is more crucial than price, start your auction at $1 no-reserve. Don’t be completely petrified of your boat selling for significantly less than hoped for. If you notice bidding for your boat is not reaching anywhere near the level you had hoped for you can cancel it at any time. However, only cancel your auction as a last resort. Research has shown that bidding may increase as much as 50% in the last minute (realistically, you should expect somewhere between a 0-15% increase) so you do not want to risk ending your auction prematurely. Furthermore, ending your auction early solely because of price is, technically, a violation of eBay’s user agreement. Countless ellers have been guilty of canceling an auction for this reason and I have never heard of eBay ever prosecuting anybody for this. However, you do have some moral obligation to run as honest an auction as possible.

Some closing notes:

Sometimes eBay is most useful not for attracting bids to your item, but for attracting attention. Over half of the reserved/high starting bid auctions I’ve run have not sold directly through eBay but rather indirectly through eBay when bidders contact me after the auction to make an offer.

At the time of this writing (September 2006, eBay charged a $49.95 insertion fee for most powerboats (slightly less for smaller boats) and a $49.95 final value fee if your boat sells (again, slightly less for smaller boats). Unfortunately this fee structure does not discriminate between selling your baby for $25,000 (where $100 is quite reasonable) and the beater you sell for $400 (where $100 is not so reasonable).

In general, you can expect your boat to sell for around 20-30% less than normal market value. Of course, fetching fair market value by advertising your boat in the classifieds section of your local paper can take months, whereas eBay allows you to sell your boat in as little as a few days.