Unfortunately, there is some time in our lives in which we might need to part ways with our beloved boats and, like any other occasions that have us taking part in vehicle transactions, it can be a bit of a pain in the neck. Luckily for you, it doesn’t have to be like that. This article will show you the steps you can take to make the process easier for you and your buyer, particularly stating some of the items you need to consider when writing your vessel bill of sale. Let’s find out without further ado.
Steps To Take Before Selling the Boat
We will begin with the easy parts: cleaning the boat and making sure that it is working properly. After that, we recommend you hire a professional photographer to take some good pictures of the boat: potential buyers pay more attention to those boats published online with good photographs. In the meantime, and if you didn’t take care before, the paperwork needs to be up to date as well. That means either registered and titled at a state level or licensed at a federal level. If you are selling your craft along with a trailer or engine, they should have their paperwork as well. If you don’t have a title, you can use the vessel bill of sale you were given when you bought the boat to prove your ownership.
At this point, you need to decide between two possibilities. One is to go to a broker who will sell the boat for you. The other is to publish the boat online and arrange the sale with a potential buyer privately. With this second choice, you would probably be getting a better deal than if someone processes the transaction on your behalf. If you decide to do it on your own, we advise you to do some research about the value of similar watercraft on the market. This way you won’t be selling it cheap and losing money, and you won’t publish it too expensive as well and take too long to find a buyer.
How to Write a Vessel Bill of Sale
If you chose to sell your boat with a broker you can stop reading this article here, as the broker will take care of the full transaction for you. But if you didn’t, well, you better keep reading. Once a buyer shows up and you both reach an agreement for the price it will be paid for the transaction, you should write a vessel bill of sale between the two of you, so the buyer can keep that as proof of ownership to be able to register his boat with the corresponding authority.
There is no official form for this document, although some samples are available online. Generally, the paper includes the date and selling price, some basic information about the seller and the buyer like their names, addresses, and contact details, and information about the boat like make, model, color, and year along with the official and HIN numbers and manufacturer’s name. If anything else is included on the transfer, or if something is not working properly, you can include it here with the warranty information. Once you are done with the details the people involved have to sign the document. If it can be notarized, even better. Once you have signed the document, each person involved in the transaction should keep a copy of the bill of sale.
The Maritime Documentation Center Can Process Vessel Paperwork for You
Now that the copy of the vessel bill of sale has been completed, the buyer will be able to register the boat in his name with the USCG. This, and any other type of vessel paperwork, can be done with our help, the Maritime Documentation Center. We are a third-party agency that allows access to any type of boat documentation completely online. Contact us today for any other doubts you may have and we will clear them!