Marketing
Listing-portal fees, photography, and answering enquiries — most of them tyre-kickers — for months.
Sell side · Honest comparison
Every broker says “use a broker”. Here is when not to.
Selling it yourself works when the vessel is simple, correctly papered and priced under about USD 100,000. Above that, buyer reach, escrow and document discipline usually recover more than the commission costs.
In short
FSBO is a reasonable route when most of these are true: boat-tier rather than yacht-tier, paperwork complete and in your name, a local buyer who can inspect in person, no hurry, and you can be present for viewings.
- A day boat in Serangan with clean papers and a patient owner does not need a brokerage mandate — and we say so when owners ask.
- Above the boat tier the mathematics shift: yacht-tier buyers are mostly non-local, so reach decides price.
- Owners often come to the desk after a private listing stales. We re-value honestly and disclose the earlier history, because staleness has a price.
The DIY route
What selling it yourself actually costs
The commission is the visible number. These are the ones that are not.
Time
Viewings, sea runs, negotiations. Sellers routinely underestimate this at 40–80 hours over a sale.
Pricing error
The largest hidden cost. Overprice and the boat stales publicly; underprice and the loss dwarfs any commission saved.
Document risk
Registration transfer, tax exposure and a bill of sale from a template — errors surface after the money moved.
Side by side
The two routes, without the sales pitch
Cost
- Sell it yourself
- Portal fees plus your time
- Brokered sale
- Commission on closing only
Buyer reach
- Sell it yourself
- Local buyers and portals
- Brokered sale
- Buyer register, operator and captain network, international channels
Pricing
- Sell it yourself
- Your estimate
- Brokered sale
- Written valuation from comparable Indonesian sales
Payment security
- Sell it yourself
- Direct transfer risk
- Brokered sale
- Escrowed deposit and structured release
Documents
- Sell it yourself
- Template bill of sale
- Brokered sale
- Managed MOA, registration and tax-aware transfer
Best for
- Sell it yourself
- Simple boats under ~USD 100K, patient local sale
- Brokered sale
- Yacht-tier, commercial vessels, absent owners, timelines
Becoming your own broker only pays if you intend to keep brokering afterwards: a registered entity, market data, a buyer network that takes years to build, and escrow arrangements banks accept. Acquiring all that to save one commission is the most expensive way ever devised to sell one boat.
The honest answers
Questions owners ask
Get an honest read first.
Send the vessel details and your asking idea. We will tell you plainly whether a mandate is worth it — sometimes the answer is no.