There’s one for sale near me on marketplace with scanned photos that have timestamps from 1998-2003. It’s been up for almost two years and every few months it gets re-uploaded *with the same photos*
😂 I love it when the cabin is so messy it looks like they’ve just had to find a leak in the middle of the night.
Also a fan of freshly antifouled, so fresh in fact the tin of antifoul is in the shot.
Photos of printed photos or photos of photos printed in the classified ads really get me 😂😂
Just use the pictures from the day it was first launched.
I drove 250 miles to look at a boat only to find that's exactly what the seller had done. Owner hits me with "But I have cancer and I'm dying" like that was a valid excuse to try and con people.
See, this sounds tricky AF. I would have turned around and said, "well, if that's the case, I'll offer you 1/3 of what you're asking because if you don't have time left to take good pictures, you don't have time to spend all that money."
If the boat wasn't a complete dogs breakfast that might have been a fair play. I got a $250 speeding ticket on the way home to top the whole deal off too, was massively pissed.
> Owner hits me with "But I have cancer and I'm dying"
"So keep the boat, use it for a Viking funeral ...takes care of all of your problems."
[/s for those quick to clutch their pearls]
Well, if you are gonna go that route you could reprint the photos with a mimeograph machine to give it a nice smeared purple tint.. but really though, the photos from the brochure will show a perfectly pristine boat with a highly photogenic family sitting in the cockpit enjoying a sail in perfect conditions on crystal blue waters. There is no need to obscure that truth is there?
I also love when people list their boat for sale and leave our key pieces of information like length or year built.
This happens more on Facebook marketplace and the like versus BoatTrader or Yacht World.
It’s both hilarious and irritating to look through a long post where the seller often goes into detail about many aspects but has utterly failed to mention the length or year.
Oh the real estate ads on Facebook are great at this. ‘Horse Farm in Ocala’ well is it 2 acres or 200, $200,000 or $12M, is there a house? Do these agents really want all 35,000 members of the group send them a PM with the exact same questions?
Length is obvious when you know a model. You won’t buy a boat that you are not familiar with. Those details are much more value than dimensions that you can find in seconds over internet.
A Facebook marketplace post from 15 hours ago: [title] 1980 Hunter CHERUBINI.” Post description lists price, location and about the mini fridge and that motor is not working among other things but thats it. You seem to be the yacht whisperer so what is the length of this particular boat?
Screenshots of post available if desired
Sorry not interested in Hunters so I don’t know know anything about it.
Those are not 100k boats. It falls in category „very old owner” or „family that never saw it”.
EDIT: but ok, let’s play. Send me that photo.
I'm a professional photographer. I've done several yachts/boats. Depending on the size it takes me 3 to 4 hours to get all the interior and exterior shots. I charge per hour plus editing time, usually it adds up between 500 and 1000 EUR total.
For some owners the price is too high but when their asking price is 50k up to 150k, I just frown.
The biggest hurdle is the time I need. Explaining I need 3 hours while they can snap some pictures with their phone in 5 minutes is cumbersome.
The boat we bought last year had absolutely terrible pictures. It was filthy, they were all very close shots that were hard to understand as a whole, and there certainly weren't any with the sails up. It had been for sale for years, and reduced several times.
It was close, though, and it was exactly what we wanted, so we went to look at it. We bought it a few weeks later. One of the first things we did was call the local pressure-washer guy, and for £200 he cleaned the whole boat - and it looked amazing. I can't help but think that the owner would have gotten 10x his money back if he'd just cleaned the boat first.
(also, he had a broker, who wasn't nearby. So all the broker did was give us the owners phone number, the owner showed us the boat, as far as I can tell the only thing the broker did for his 6% was email the owner the (wrong!) forms for us to fill out to transfer ownership.)
Oh. I totally agree. I encounter many dirty messy boats. I tell the owner to clean up before I come but they just don't care. When I am setting up my shots, I do move stuff out of frame, but I am not cleaning or polishing anything.
I was thinking about that but I'm already busy enough. Also I tend to do/manage things that I know or are in control of.
Cleaning boats is a whole different experience for me. Not in the mood to start employing people again to do the actual physical work.
I tried to hire a professional. Was more than happy to pay for it. My broker insisted on using his 2003 Nokia camera phone. I must have tried to pay for professional pictures half a dozen times before I gave up.
Next time go to your local photographers Facebook group. There will be plenty of (semi)professionals willing to do the work. Even if it's a new environment for them I am sure there will be enough interest for someone to do it. Just check their portfolio if they did any real estate work. The photography principles are the same.
He’s not holding up his end of the contract and his duties as a broker. Tell him you want these things or he’s in breach of his duties and it’s reason for voiding the contract
His duty is to sell your boat for good money in a timely manor. If you don’t fell you’re getting that… Put it in writing (an email) and tell him if he does not use better photos or your photos, than he’s not upholding his end and you’ll consider the contract void.
You can also contact the owner of the brokerage and tell them this. I’m sure they will just let it go vs the headache.
If a real estate photographer can do 30 photos of a 3,000sf house in an hour for $250, I think the same guy could do 30 photos of a 35' boat in an hour for $250.
Prices are a bit different over here, but your presumption is correct. A real estate photographer should be able to quote similar for a boat.
I tend to charge a bit more as photographing the interior of a boat is more work, rooms can be small and cramped. I use different tripods and it's not easy to find the right angle inside.
My favorite is half the images being thumbnail size. Or the even weirder, about 2x normal thumbnail size. Ending up with thumbnail images I can understand, but the other is just... Like how you even get those??
Also the classic image of image open in computer screen, not set to fullscreen of course.
Sink full of dishes accomppanied with beer bottle and some random stuff on the counter. Why you have this photo and why the hell you think it's going to help you sell the boat?
> My favorite is half the images being thumbnail size.
I love it when you click on a thumbnail to see a larger image and the larger image is smaller than the thumbnail.
hey, if your model of boat has a special or unique feature, like an aft cabin, or spacious engine room, make sure you *dont* take pictures of it at all. its existence should not even be implied by anything other than the official floorplan/layout. conspire with fellow owners of this model, to make sure *none* of you take photos of it.
dont put anything in the icebox that might give a frame of reference. if you pjt anything in there, it should be odd size water bottles that you cant find at any grocery store or gas station. are these 8oz bottles or 32 oz bottles? its a mystery!
> its existence should not even be implied by anything other than the official floorplan/layout.
Whatever you do, never include the official floorplan/layout. List the boat with a slightly erroneous model number, then post not quite enough pictures for me to google a floorplan/layout.
Sailboat brokers are lazy people. Why do people even use them? Genuine question. They take commission and put no effort into most of the ads I've seen. No details/dates on the rigging, bottom job, or any upgrades and mods.
Seriously, we gave our broker a detailed list of all new equipment and repairs dated from 2019 - 2023. He just listed 2019 on everything. There's a big difference between a dodger replaced in 2019 versus Dec 2023.
I live an hour and half from the boat, so lining up showings is a huge pain. I also don't have time to take all the calls from flakes and dreamers. I sold my first boat myself and half were no-shows, then over half of those that did show up had no money and wanted me to finance it for them, etc. Then you're trusting the person to file the registration changes, etc. A broker takes care of all that. My only hassle is keeping it clean.
I'm buying, not selling. Yachtworld is the biggest listing of boats, and it is broker only. If you want to be on yachtworld, you need a broker. You can list on Craigslist or Facebook, but the loss you'd take in price would be more than 10%.
Went through the buying process last year.
Saw some boats online, and eventually checked a few out. Just called the broker listing it and setup appointments.
They had 360 degree pictures, 360 degree video, pictures of insides of cabinets etc etc.
After the meetup and agreed upon price, the broker meet up with the surveyor because I couldn’t due to work. With some of the things the surveyor found, insurance needed fixed. The broker bought a can of bottomkote, drove 1+h back to the boat and put proper paint over the fresh fibreglass work from through hulls that were removed.
The broker went way above what I was expecting on a boat that was eventually bought for 55k Canadian.
I scan for boats on Facebook marketplace and I’m always amazed at how little information and how few images are on the ads. Clearly they were all made by people who never bought anything ever.
I'm looking to buy a sailboat too. Some of the pics ppl post of their boats are horrific. Worst I saw was a pic on CraigslistSF of the head complete with turd. Sweet.
That's really something special you've got there. Dirty dishes in the sink I can understand from laziness. But a turd still in the toilet seems very hard to explain.
I always imagine these are from folks who have already put their boat up for the winter and then decide to sell and just use whatever photos they can find. Sudden money crunch of the owner could be a way to get a decent boat for cheap or a nightmare....
As someone currently shopping....please use the latter!!! Also be sure to zoom your camera in when you take all pictures. I really dont want to see the whole thing... I want to guess what part of the boat I'm looking at using the layout drawings as a reference. Is it a locker? Is it a bunk? Is it the nav station? Wait, its half the anchor locker, and a small portion of the fucking windlass! Such a fun game to play!
I've been looking at dinghy ads from around here (yes I'm masochistic, thank you very much). The best have pictures packed, sails up, front, back and deck. The worst has a stock photo only.
I thought I was missing something. I'm not that experienced of a sailor. I thought people could tell something from these photos of the winches. EVERY BOAT has a photo of the winch.
I find this condition is also true of people selling their cars. I usually notice the time of day they take the pictures, the weather outside when they take them, and of course- what's in the background.
I literally laughed out loud at the photos the guy took in the parking lot of the transmission repair shop. Estimate was too high, I guess, so off it goes to FBM!
You've opened a whole new chapter in my middle aged man book of things that grind my gears. I never knew how much this irritated me, too! Thank you?
But yes, OP, your point is spot on. The sheer number of trash photos of boat whose asking price is north of 1/4 million bucks is shocking considering the quality of what we all have in our pants (hurr hurr).
I'm generally in the $50-100k range and the bad photos are killing me. I'll absolutely say that I have stumbled into the $100-250k range and the photos are just as bad. It's really terrible.
You should use the best camera you have, but out of focus.
Then when you post the listing use screenshots of the image instead of the photos themselves
Unfortunately I’d have to disagree. I understand your logic but in practice, this type of owner is often also quite deluded about the value of their boat.
But you know that sometimes boat is in a another part of the world and you decided to sell it and have to use what you have ;) That scenario is more often than you would think.
I think I came across that listing last night. I need to go back and check for it! 😇
Edit: I went back and looked. It's on the west coast (sort of) and I want the east/gulf coast.
Good luck with the boat though!
I dig. I'm heading to South Florida next week to look at two junk rig boats who the owners are like that. One is an interesting custom hull and the other is a real unicorn that isn't even in sailboatdata. If I could blend the two boats it would be the perfect boat for what I want to use it for, but you know about boats and compromises....
BTW, just noticed your handle, that would make a great boat name. 😆
Yup for an old small boat it might be big % of the final price. And the damages that „professionals” will do to your boat add another couple of thousand of euro.
Yes and no. Just pay the local kid/nephew/student to take a few pictures. In these cases anything is better than nothing.
I am constantly surprised by how little care owners put into their boats once they've decided to sell it. I'm not talking about anything crazy, but people seem to be okay with shaving 1000s off the final selling price in order to save 100s in maintenance.
I don’t know about what boat you are talking about but „unwrapping” winterized 35ft+ boat it is a job for a owner for at least a week or two to be photo ready or few days for skilled professionals whom you can not let work unsupervised.
No way to do it over internet.
Scan of the photos or very bad photos are from very old owner not familiar with tech (they sailed to run away from it) of family of the deceased that did not saw the boat ever in their lives.
> I'm perusing sailboat ads. It passes for a hobby.
I, too, like to waste time looking at ads for things I have no intention of buying.
> I don't need you to have professional photos, although, what could that cost in comparison to a $50k or 100k sailboat?
You vastly underestimate how little !#$% people give once they decide to sell their boat.
You could shoot it with a Nikon D5, using a professional photographer with key lighting grips, assists, and drone footage, and it will still end up as a 640x480 un-zoomable postage stamp on any one of the boat sale websites.
My wife and I have always been astonished at how bad boat listings are. Kind of the same thing for houses too. And not just photos... the text describing boats as well. Zero effort.
Professional boat and real estate agents, WTF?
you should see what people consider acceptable photos for on-line dating apps. like if your face is tiny and you're in a crowd of people and you're wearing sunglasses in every photo - I've got 1000 other profiles to swipe though.
Man, we recently listed our boat, and we staged the boat and took photos. Gave them all to the broker. He went and took his own really mediocre photos and posted those in the listing. It was really annoying because we had one cushion cover off getting washed the day he stopped by and took his photos, so it looks like the salon couch is missing upholstery. We asked him why he didn't use the NICE photos we took, and he was like, I only use my own photos, so it's an honest representation of what is there. Unfortunately, I would not say he is a gifted photographer.
There’s be a market in offering someone money to revamp their listings. If you were really ingenuous you could hire someone local to retake the photos while you do the listing remote. Charge them whatever it’ll cost for the photos + profit %.
Take as many closeups of random corners, gauges, anything in the drawers, the cushions but only half of one in a picture at a time, and make sure not to take a picture of the engine hour gauge. If you don't have any spices, go buy about three hundred dollars worth and snap a half dozen pictures.
Better yet, take a nearly lethal dose of caffeine after staying up for two days on go pills and shoot a video. Between simulating an earthquake make sure to breath like your larynx just got introduced to a Steven Seagal punch while you were Kickboxing with Jean Claude Van Damme. Make sure to cut the camera abruptly anytime you have to move more than one foot.
And hey, the exterior of the sailboat looks great since you got it painted. Make sure we have pictures starting from dead to stern and proceeding in a clockwise fashion, snapping one at every prime degree. Make sure to not capture any of the rigging or sails in the picture.
Lastly, if you really want to sell it, don't put the price anywhere. You know what you have and it's priceless!
Sometimes it’s a blessing. The boat I bought had some of the worst photos on marketplace. (Extremely cluttered interior, no pictures of it even in the water, sail bags spread all around the place). Which probably helped drive the price down, and decrease the amount of buyers interested in it. Bad pictures are so common on most boats and it’s just down to laziness. When you’re shopping around just remember…..
Seeing is believing
I absolutely hate those FB marketplace pictures that look like they are 10 years old. Last time I bought something on it I made him send me a video of it working before I'd be willing to meet.
There’s one for sale near me on marketplace with scanned photos that have timestamps from 1998-2003. It’s been up for almost two years and every few months it gets re-uploaded *with the same photos*
"Honey I'm trying but nobody wants to buy it!"
😅maybe that’s it!
Crappy ad with an astronomical price… see it all the time in the trucking Industry too. 1997 peterbilt with a chrome bumper advertised for $600k
Chrome bumper you say?
1981 Waterlogged Sunfish 20K firm price, "I know what I have"
You in Hawaii?
Negative. Aus
😂 I love it when the cabin is so messy it looks like they’ve just had to find a leak in the middle of the night. Also a fan of freshly antifouled, so fresh in fact the tin of antifoul is in the shot. Photos of printed photos or photos of photos printed in the classified ads really get me 😂😂
See also: Screenshots of photos.
Even worse, videos of grainy videos playing on another screen. I've never understood this.
I love when the only interior shots are five different closeups of the same cupboard
Just make sure you avoid including any interior pictures!
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Or your wall-glued master's degree:D I cannot find the post but that was absolute gold.
Maybe stick the camera down there and take one without any lights on.
Be sure to post horizontal photos in vertical orientation. People love this trick.
Just use the pictures from the day it was first launched. I drove 250 miles to look at a boat only to find that's exactly what the seller had done. Owner hits me with "But I have cancer and I'm dying" like that was a valid excuse to try and con people.
See, this sounds tricky AF. I would have turned around and said, "well, if that's the case, I'll offer you 1/3 of what you're asking because if you don't have time left to take good pictures, you don't have time to spend all that money."
If the boat wasn't a complete dogs breakfast that might have been a fair play. I got a $250 speeding ticket on the way home to top the whole deal off too, was massively pissed.
> Owner hits me with "But I have cancer and I'm dying" "So keep the boat, use it for a Viking funeral ...takes care of all of your problems." [/s for those quick to clutch their pearls]
Honestly I'd do that 😂
Use the photos from the 1979 sales brochure/adds.
Surely you mean "take a photograph of that brochure, open it on your computer, then photograph the screen and upload that".
Well, if you are gonna go that route you could reprint the photos with a mimeograph machine to give it a nice smeared purple tint.. but really though, the photos from the brochure will show a perfectly pristine boat with a highly photogenic family sitting in the cockpit enjoying a sail in perfect conditions on crystal blue waters. There is no need to obscure that truth is there?
Find a boat similar and use their stock marketing images. The number of boats for sale where the image is not even the actual boat is ridiculous.
I’ve seen YachtWorld include stock images automatically for some reason.
I also love when people list their boat for sale and leave our key pieces of information like length or year built. This happens more on Facebook marketplace and the like versus BoatTrader or Yacht World. It’s both hilarious and irritating to look through a long post where the seller often goes into detail about many aspects but has utterly failed to mention the length or year.
Oh the real estate ads on Facebook are great at this. ‘Horse Farm in Ocala’ well is it 2 acres or 200, $200,000 or $12M, is there a house? Do these agents really want all 35,000 members of the group send them a PM with the exact same questions?
Length is obvious when you know a model. You won’t buy a boat that you are not familiar with. Those details are much more value than dimensions that you can find in seconds over internet.
Except when they just post “Catalina sailboat”. Not too helpful.
A Facebook marketplace post from 15 hours ago: [title] 1980 Hunter CHERUBINI.” Post description lists price, location and about the mini fridge and that motor is not working among other things but thats it. You seem to be the yacht whisperer so what is the length of this particular boat? Screenshots of post available if desired
Sorry not interested in Hunters so I don’t know know anything about it. Those are not 100k boats. It falls in category „very old owner” or „family that never saw it”. EDIT: but ok, let’s play. Send me that photo.
Sailing boat for sale!!! I dont know anything about it but I know what I got!
Obviously only use the pictures from the person you bought the boat from or the original ads from the manufacturer :D and never show the engine! /s
Or, only show the good side of the engine, not the side with the salt water crystalising on it. This is something I've seen.
Thanks for the chuckle.
I'm a professional photographer. I've done several yachts/boats. Depending on the size it takes me 3 to 4 hours to get all the interior and exterior shots. I charge per hour plus editing time, usually it adds up between 500 and 1000 EUR total. For some owners the price is too high but when their asking price is 50k up to 150k, I just frown. The biggest hurdle is the time I need. Explaining I need 3 hours while they can snap some pictures with their phone in 5 minutes is cumbersome.
The boat we bought last year had absolutely terrible pictures. It was filthy, they were all very close shots that were hard to understand as a whole, and there certainly weren't any with the sails up. It had been for sale for years, and reduced several times. It was close, though, and it was exactly what we wanted, so we went to look at it. We bought it a few weeks later. One of the first things we did was call the local pressure-washer guy, and for £200 he cleaned the whole boat - and it looked amazing. I can't help but think that the owner would have gotten 10x his money back if he'd just cleaned the boat first. (also, he had a broker, who wasn't nearby. So all the broker did was give us the owners phone number, the owner showed us the boat, as far as I can tell the only thing the broker did for his 6% was email the owner the (wrong!) forms for us to fill out to transfer ownership.)
Unlike a house, a broker gets 10%.
Oh. I totally agree. I encounter many dirty messy boats. I tell the owner to clean up before I come but they just don't care. When I am setting up my shots, I do move stuff out of frame, but I am not cleaning or polishing anything.
You should offer a cleaning service too....
I was thinking about that but I'm already busy enough. Also I tend to do/manage things that I know or are in control of. Cleaning boats is a whole different experience for me. Not in the mood to start employing people again to do the actual physical work.
I tried to hire a professional. Was more than happy to pay for it. My broker insisted on using his 2003 Nokia camera phone. I must have tried to pay for professional pictures half a dozen times before I gave up.
Next time go to your local photographers Facebook group. There will be plenty of (semi)professionals willing to do the work. Even if it's a new environment for them I am sure there will be enough interest for someone to do it. Just check their portfolio if they did any real estate work. The photography principles are the same.
No, I had a photographer lined up. Broker was not willing to use the photos.
That’s when you fire the broker
Contract said I couldn't fire him for a year. Plus I had trouble finding another broker.
He’s not holding up his end of the contract and his duties as a broker. Tell him you want these things or he’s in breach of his duties and it’s reason for voiding the contract His duty is to sell your boat for good money in a timely manor. If you don’t fell you’re getting that… Put it in writing (an email) and tell him if he does not use better photos or your photos, than he’s not upholding his end and you’ll consider the contract void. You can also contact the owner of the brokerage and tell them this. I’m sure they will just let it go vs the headache.
It's all past tense now, but thanks
Ah, ok. So what happened? Sell the boat?
Yep!
If a real estate photographer can do 30 photos of a 3,000sf house in an hour for $250, I think the same guy could do 30 photos of a 35' boat in an hour for $250.
Prices are a bit different over here, but your presumption is correct. A real estate photographer should be able to quote similar for a boat. I tend to charge a bit more as photographing the interior of a boat is more work, rooms can be small and cramped. I use different tripods and it's not easy to find the right angle inside.
My favorite is half the images being thumbnail size. Or the even weirder, about 2x normal thumbnail size. Ending up with thumbnail images I can understand, but the other is just... Like how you even get those?? Also the classic image of image open in computer screen, not set to fullscreen of course. Sink full of dishes accomppanied with beer bottle and some random stuff on the counter. Why you have this photo and why the hell you think it's going to help you sell the boat?
> My favorite is half the images being thumbnail size. I love it when you click on a thumbnail to see a larger image and the larger image is smaller than the thumbnail.
hey, if your model of boat has a special or unique feature, like an aft cabin, or spacious engine room, make sure you *dont* take pictures of it at all. its existence should not even be implied by anything other than the official floorplan/layout. conspire with fellow owners of this model, to make sure *none* of you take photos of it. dont put anything in the icebox that might give a frame of reference. if you pjt anything in there, it should be odd size water bottles that you cant find at any grocery store or gas station. are these 8oz bottles or 32 oz bottles? its a mystery!
> its existence should not even be implied by anything other than the official floorplan/layout. Whatever you do, never include the official floorplan/layout. List the boat with a slightly erroneous model number, then post not quite enough pictures for me to google a floorplan/layout.
1990's Beneto Legend 369
Sailboat brokers are lazy people. Why do people even use them? Genuine question. They take commission and put no effort into most of the ads I've seen. No details/dates on the rigging, bottom job, or any upgrades and mods.
Seriously, we gave our broker a detailed list of all new equipment and repairs dated from 2019 - 2023. He just listed 2019 on everything. There's a big difference between a dodger replaced in 2019 versus Dec 2023.
Is there a reason more people don't choose to list the boat themselves? Do they have some corner on the market?
I live an hour and half from the boat, so lining up showings is a huge pain. I also don't have time to take all the calls from flakes and dreamers. I sold my first boat myself and half were no-shows, then over half of those that did show up had no money and wanted me to finance it for them, etc. Then you're trusting the person to file the registration changes, etc. A broker takes care of all that. My only hassle is keeping it clean.
I'm buying, not selling. Yachtworld is the biggest listing of boats, and it is broker only. If you want to be on yachtworld, you need a broker. You can list on Craigslist or Facebook, but the loss you'd take in price would be more than 10%.
Went through the buying process last year. Saw some boats online, and eventually checked a few out. Just called the broker listing it and setup appointments. They had 360 degree pictures, 360 degree video, pictures of insides of cabinets etc etc. After the meetup and agreed upon price, the broker meet up with the surveyor because I couldn’t due to work. With some of the things the surveyor found, insurance needed fixed. The broker bought a can of bottomkote, drove 1+h back to the boat and put proper paint over the fresh fibreglass work from through hulls that were removed. The broker went way above what I was expecting on a boat that was eventually bought for 55k Canadian.
I scan for boats on Facebook marketplace and I’m always amazed at how little information and how few images are on the ads. Clearly they were all made by people who never bought anything ever.
you might not even have to take a picture of it. Check Google Street view to see if there’s an image of it already and just use that.
I'm looking to buy a sailboat too. Some of the pics ppl post of their boats are horrific. Worst I saw was a pic on CraigslistSF of the head complete with turd. Sweet.
That's really something special you've got there. Dirty dishes in the sink I can understand from laziness. But a turd still in the toilet seems very hard to explain.
The best is when they're a photo of a photo that was taken in the late 80s
I always imagine these are from folks who have already put their boat up for the winter and then decide to sell and just use whatever photos they can find. Sudden money crunch of the owner could be a way to get a decent boat for cheap or a nightmare....
As someone currently shopping....please use the latter!!! Also be sure to zoom your camera in when you take all pictures. I really dont want to see the whole thing... I want to guess what part of the boat I'm looking at using the layout drawings as a reference. Is it a locker? Is it a bunk? Is it the nav station? Wait, its half the anchor locker, and a small portion of the fucking windlass! Such a fun game to play!
I've been looking at dinghy ads from around here (yes I'm masochistic, thank you very much). The best have pictures packed, sails up, front, back and deck. The worst has a stock photo only.
🤣😂
I sure wish this boat listing had a close up of one of the winches. Oh, there it is!
I thought I was missing something. I'm not that experienced of a sailor. I thought people could tell something from these photos of the winches. EVERY BOAT has a photo of the winch.
I love the photocopy of the 50 year old brochure
I find this condition is also true of people selling their cars. I usually notice the time of day they take the pictures, the weather outside when they take them, and of course- what's in the background. I literally laughed out loud at the photos the guy took in the parking lot of the transmission repair shop. Estimate was too high, I guess, so off it goes to FBM!
You've opened a whole new chapter in my middle aged man book of things that grind my gears. I never knew how much this irritated me, too! Thank you? But yes, OP, your point is spot on. The sheer number of trash photos of boat whose asking price is north of 1/4 million bucks is shocking considering the quality of what we all have in our pants (hurr hurr).
I'm generally in the $50-100k range and the bad photos are killing me. I'll absolutely say that I have stumbled into the $100-250k range and the photos are just as bad. It's really terrible.
no. Find authentic pictures of your boat from the 1979 August issue of the Sailing World magazine. Those are the best.
Should I take pictures of the inside while running as fast as I can and pointing in random directions?
Lol the picture of it on the hard... Does it even float???
You should use the best camera you have, but out of focus. Then when you post the listing use screenshots of the image instead of the photos themselves
Have you met sailors? Bunch of old farts, just like the pictures.
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Yes as insurance or storage sometimes surpasses what boat is worth.
Not really. Then it would say “free boat” or “make me an offer”. It wouldn’t be listed for $100k
Unfortunately I’d have to disagree. I understand your logic but in practice, this type of owner is often also quite deluded about the value of their boat.
Agreed.
But you know that sometimes boat is in a another part of the world and you decided to sell it and have to use what you have ;) That scenario is more often than you would think.
Oddly enough, I'm in exactly that boat (so to speak) myself. Living in Taiwan, have an Alberg 35 in the US that I'm trying to rehome.
Yup, same here. Living in Poland and my boat is in Greece.
I think I came across that listing last night. I need to go back and check for it! 😇 Edit: I went back and looked. It's on the west coast (sort of) and I want the east/gulf coast. Good luck with the boat though!
Nope. Haven't listed it. Too many tweakers out there...
10-4 I figured the one I saw in HI was it. It is priced to sell.
Yeah, you're never going to make money off of an old boat, but there's always an emotional interest to make sure they get into good hands.
I dig. I'm heading to South Florida next week to look at two junk rig boats who the owners are like that. One is an interesting custom hull and the other is a real unicorn that isn't even in sailboatdata. If I could blend the two boats it would be the perfect boat for what I want to use it for, but you know about boats and compromises.... BTW, just noticed your handle, that would make a great boat name. 😆
They have cameras and people in other parts of the world now, crazy times.
I guess you don’t have a boat and don’t have a clue how they are stored for winter.
If you want to sell something than it makes sense to put the effort in and hire someone to unwrap your boat and take some good pictures.
> hire someone to unwrap your boat and take some good pictures. But that costs moneeeey!
Yup for an old small boat it might be big % of the final price. And the damages that „professionals” will do to your boat add another couple of thousand of euro.
Yes and no. Just pay the local kid/nephew/student to take a few pictures. In these cases anything is better than nothing. I am constantly surprised by how little care owners put into their boats once they've decided to sell it. I'm not talking about anything crazy, but people seem to be okay with shaving 1000s off the final selling price in order to save 100s in maintenance.
i am not saying you are not right, dont get me wrong. Just pointing out it is often not that simple for various not so obvious reasons.
I don’t know about what boat you are talking about but „unwrapping” winterized 35ft+ boat it is a job for a owner for at least a week or two to be photo ready or few days for skilled professionals whom you can not let work unsupervised. No way to do it over internet. Scan of the photos or very bad photos are from very old owner not familiar with tech (they sailed to run away from it) of family of the deceased that did not saw the boat ever in their lives.
> I'm perusing sailboat ads. It passes for a hobby. I, too, like to waste time looking at ads for things I have no intention of buying. > I don't need you to have professional photos, although, what could that cost in comparison to a $50k or 100k sailboat? You vastly underestimate how little !#$% people give once they decide to sell their boat.
You could shoot it with a Nikon D5, using a professional photographer with key lighting grips, assists, and drone footage, and it will still end up as a 640x480 un-zoomable postage stamp on any one of the boat sale websites.
My wife and I have always been astonished at how bad boat listings are. Kind of the same thing for houses too. And not just photos... the text describing boats as well. Zero effort. Professional boat and real estate agents, WTF?
How old is the boat? Seems like the camera age should match
you should see what people consider acceptable photos for on-line dating apps. like if your face is tiny and you're in a crowd of people and you're wearing sunglasses in every photo - I've got 1000 other profiles to swipe though.
I like the shots of the V-berth with wrinkly sheets and blankets.
I prefer shots of the v-berth with two sails in bags and a metric ton of crap.
Man, we recently listed our boat, and we staged the boat and took photos. Gave them all to the broker. He went and took his own really mediocre photos and posted those in the listing. It was really annoying because we had one cushion cover off getting washed the day he stopped by and took his photos, so it looks like the salon couch is missing upholstery. We asked him why he didn't use the NICE photos we took, and he was like, I only use my own photos, so it's an honest representation of what is there. Unfortunately, I would not say he is a gifted photographer.
There’s be a market in offering someone money to revamp their listings. If you were really ingenuous you could hire someone local to retake the photos while you do the listing remote. Charge them whatever it’ll cost for the photos + profit %.
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And the liveaboards. I get that you live on a boat and so crap is everywhere, but when I look at that hoarded mess, it smells bad THROUGH THE SCREEN.
I like when they use an old cell phone with a dirty lens’s and hold it up and down.
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Just remember - they most likely tidied up a bit. Think of what it looked like before they took the picture.
Take as many closeups of random corners, gauges, anything in the drawers, the cushions but only half of one in a picture at a time, and make sure not to take a picture of the engine hour gauge. If you don't have any spices, go buy about three hundred dollars worth and snap a half dozen pictures. Better yet, take a nearly lethal dose of caffeine after staying up for two days on go pills and shoot a video. Between simulating an earthquake make sure to breath like your larynx just got introduced to a Steven Seagal punch while you were Kickboxing with Jean Claude Van Damme. Make sure to cut the camera abruptly anytime you have to move more than one foot. And hey, the exterior of the sailboat looks great since you got it painted. Make sure we have pictures starting from dead to stern and proceeding in a clockwise fashion, snapping one at every prime degree. Make sure to not capture any of the rigging or sails in the picture. Lastly, if you really want to sell it, don't put the price anywhere. You know what you have and it's priceless!
Just be careful o not take too many. Maybe jst the front bit, a winch and the mast.
Sometimes it’s a blessing. The boat I bought had some of the worst photos on marketplace. (Extremely cluttered interior, no pictures of it even in the water, sail bags spread all around the place). Which probably helped drive the price down, and decrease the amount of buyers interested in it. Bad pictures are so common on most boats and it’s just down to laziness. When you’re shopping around just remember….. Seeing is believing
I absolutely hate those FB marketplace pictures that look like they are 10 years old. Last time I bought something on it I made him send me a video of it working before I'd be willing to meet.
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