What ten per cent buys

Ten per cent of a twenty million euro boat is two million euros for arranging a sale, which sounds like a great deal of money until you watch a transaction go wrong. The commission is paid by the seller, split between the listing broker and the buyer's broker, and it buys a process that has developed over decades to stop two strangers from ruining each other over an asset that moves.

What the listing broker does

Markets the boat without telling the market she is desperate. Screens enquiries, because a serious listing attracts a remarkable number of people who want to look at a yacht. Manages the crew, who know everything and whose careers depend on the outcome. Prices the boat against comparables that are largely private, which is the part that is genuinely hard.

Then runs the transaction: memorandum of agreement, deposit into escrow, sea trial, survey, negotiation of the findings, closing, delivery. Around fifty documents, several jurisdictions and a crew handover.

What a buyer's broker does

Costs the buyer nothing, because the seller pays the whole commission and it is split. Reads the listing for the things it does not say. Knows which boats have been on the market for two years and why. Arranges the survey and briefs the surveyor about what to look for on that model. Negotiates the price after the survey, which is where the real money moves.

A buyer without their own broker is negotiating against a professional who is paid by the other side. It happens, and it is how people buy boats with unresolved VAT positions.

The MYBA memorandum of agreement

Almost every European yacht sale runs on the same industry standard contract. The buyer pays ten per cent into escrow, has the right to a sea trial and a condition survey, and may reject the boat on the basis of the findings or accept her with the defects priced in. If the buyer walks without grounds, the deposit is at risk; if the survey is genuinely bad, it comes back.

The negotiation after the survey is the one that decides the deal. A surveyor produces a list of defects, the brokers agree which are fair wear and which are material, and the price moves or the seller does the work. This is where a buyer with a good broker and a good surveyor recovers several times the commission.

Is the commission going to survive

It has survived listing portals, discount brokers, and twenty years of predictions. The reason is that the yacht market is small, private and relational: the boat you actually want is often not listed, and the person who knows it is for sale is a broker who was at the same yard last winter. Until that changes, the ten per cent is buying access as much as process.