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Choosing a broker · The checklist

“Best” is a claim every broker makes and almost none defines.

Four things a serious desk can prove: verifiable transaction history in Indonesian waters, transparent written fees, professional indemnity cover, and a documented escrow process. Here is the checklist we would use ourselves — then how our own desk measures against it.

Talk it through How the desk works
Two brokers reviewing a mandate at a Bali desk

In short

Five minutes of verification filters out most of the market. Ask for the four documents before you sign anything, and watch how quickly they arrive.

  • Indonesia has no single national yacht broker licence. The meaningful check is a registered Indonesian company with a business classification covering vessel trading or agency, and tax-invoiced commission.
  • Client funds should never sit in the broker’s own account. Escrow is the protection; insurance is the backstop.
  • The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation. Commission applies only when a transaction closes.

The checklist

Seven criteria that separate a serious broker

In order. Transaction evidence first, market reach last — a network means nothing if nothing has ever closed.

  1. Local transaction evidence

    Two or three completed Indonesian transactions they can describe in detail: vessel type, lying location, how survey findings were negotiated.

  2. Written fee structure

    Commission percentage, what triggers it, co-brokerage handling and any withdrawal fee — on paper before you sign a mandate.

  3. Licence and legal standing

    A properly registered Indonesian company with a classification covering vessel trading or agency. A broker who cannot show company registration is a hobbyist.

  4. Insurance posture

    How they are insured for documentation errors — and more important in practice, how client money is protected.

  5. Escrow they can sketch

    Deposit in, conditions listed, release triggers defined, refund path defined. If they cannot draw it in thirty seconds, the process does not exist.

  6. Independent survey policy

    A serious broker insists on an independent inspection even when it risks the deal. Brokers who discourage surveys are telling you whose side they are on.

  7. Reach beyond a website

    The best vessels here trade through operators, captains and yards before they are ever listed. The real network decides what you get access to.

A mandate being signed at the brokerage desk

Our own answer

How our desk measures against that list

Transactions run single-mandate through the full sale and purchase process: written valuation, document audit before marketing, escrowed deposits in USD, independent surveyors on every closing.

We publish fee bands and we decline mandates we cannot verify. The brokerage desk of the Komodo Luxury group, operating in Indonesian marine tourism since 2015.

Check the workings

Three ways to test the claim

Two brokers talking on a marina walkway

Compared to the alternatives

Simpson Marine, Fraser, Lee Marine and the rest — a factual comparison about fit, not ranking.

The comparison
A vessel history file open on a desk

How we evaluate a vessel

The valuation triangulation, the document audit, and what makes us decline a mandate.

Our methodology
The desk team working through a verification file

How we research and verify

Sources, verification workflow, update cadence and the conflict of interest policy.

Editorial standards

Ask any broker

Questions worth asking anyone

Talk it through first.

Bring us your shortlist, your vessel, or just the checklist above. If another desk is the better fit for what you are doing, we will say so.

Talk it through