The moment the keys change hands
There is no day in yachting quite like delivery day. The hull is polished, the crew is briefed, the champagne is cold. And on that same morning, before the first line is cast, the asset begins to depreciate.
This is not a flaw in the market. It is the market working exactly as it should. A yacht is a beautifully engineered, intensely used, salt-exposed piece of capital equipment, and like every such asset, it ages. What separates a well-bought yacht from an expensive one is how clearly the owner understands the curve.
The first year is the expensive one
A new yacht's costliest year is its first, and fuel has nothing to do with it. The moment a hull stops being "new" and becomes "pre-owned", its valuation corrects, typically by 10 to 20 per cent. In the larger, more heavily specified motor segment the correction runs steeper: brokers working the $2 million-plus bracket report first-year declines of 15 to 25 per cent, which is $300,000 to $500,000 gone before the first season is over.
The rule of thumb used across brokerage desks is remarkably consistent: expect roughly 10 per cent in year one, then 6 to 8 per cent for each of the following four or five years. Compounded, that means a new yacht typically surrenders 30 to 40 per cent of its purchase price across its first five years.
Why "new" is so expensive to lose
Three forces do most of the damage.
- The warranty and the VAT. A new build arrives with a builder's warranty, a clean VAT position and the certainty of a first owner. A two-year-old hull carries none of those in the same measure.
- Options depreciate faster than hulls. The EUR 400,000 interior, the custom paint, the extra tender, the upgraded electronics: all of it is worth a fraction at resale. Buyers pay for the platform, not the personality.
- The buyer's alternative. Anyone weighing a two-year-old sister ship against a new build will price in the wait, the yard slot and the commissioning. That discount becomes your loss.
Not all hulls depreciate equally
Depreciation is a broad average, not a rule of physics, and the spread is wide.
Sailing yachts generally hold value better than motor yachts. A well-built bluewater cruiser with a documented history will often sit at the gentler end of the range. Planing motor yachts, with high hours, thirsty engines and complex systems, tend to depreciate fastest.
Refit provenance matters enormously. A documented yard period with invoices is worth far more than a fresh coat of varnish. A refit does not stop depreciation, but it visibly flattens the curve.
Mainstream specification sells. A yacht built for the widest sensible market will always find a buyer faster than one built around a single owner's taste.
The 2025 backdrop: a buyer's market
If the depreciation curve is the long-term story, the last two years have been the plot twist.
After the extraordinary 2021 and 2022 boom, when used boats sold in days and sometimes above asking, the market has cooled decisively. The Monaco Yacht Show Market Report 2025 paints the picture:
- 1,080 yachts over 30 metres were listed for sale as of early August 2025, a second consecutive year of rising availability.
- 200 used superyachts sold between January and July 2025, virtually identical to the 199 sold over the same period in 2024. Volume has stopped falling, but it has not recovered.
- Q1 2025 saw 87 superyacht sales against a record 160 in Q1 2024, a fall of nearly half.
- New-build sales under 50 metres were down 12 per cent, driven largely by weaker demand for sailing yachts and for yachts up to 45 metres.
- The average price reduction on a sold 30-metre-plus used yacht reached EUR 799,000, or 7.9 per cent of asking, up from EUR 676,000 (5.6 per cent) previously. That shift alone removed roughly EUR 665 million of asking value from the market.
At the volume end, Denison Yacht Sales' 2025 review found global boat sales down 9.0 per cent by unit volume, with total value slipping from $10.42 billion to $9.97 billion.
The public markets agree. Over the twelve months to August 2025, Sanlorenzo fell 14 per cent, The Italian Sea Group 43 per cent, MarineMax 14 per cent and the parent of Ocean Alexander 36 per cent.
For a seller, that means the asking price is a hypothesis and the sold price is the fact. For a buyer, it means the negotiating room has widened considerably, and that the first-year correction is now starting from a lower, more honest base.
It is worth noting what the very top of the market did. The largest publicly announced used superyacht sale of 2025 was the 83.5-metre Feadship Savannah, sold in April 2025, evidence that the largest and most exceptional yachts continue to transact even as the mid-market slows.
Depreciation is only half the bill
A yacht's loss in value is the quieter half of its cost. The louder half is the cost of keeping her.
Industry benchmarks put annual running costs at 10 to 15 per cent of purchase value, with the classic "10 per cent rule" as the planning starting point. The realistic working range is 8 to 15 per cent, and a heavy-use or refit year can push past 20 per cent.
| Cost line | Typical share of value per year | | --- | --- | | Crew (the single largest line) | 30 to 40 per cent of the annual budget | | Maintenance and repairs | 5 to 10 per cent | | Insurance | 0.5 to 2 per cent | | Berthing in premium European ports | 2 to 3 per cent | | Fuel and operation | 0.5 to 3 per cent |
A EUR 20 million yacht, then, does not cost EUR 20 million. It costs EUR 20 million, plus EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million a year to run properly, before depreciation is even counted.
What actually slows the slide
- Documentation. Service history, yard invoices, class records. Paper is the cheapest value you will ever add to a yacht.
- A completed refit. Engines, generators, teak, electronics: dated, invoiced, photographed.
- Clean VAT status and provenance. For EU buyers this is not a detail; it is often the deciding factor.
- Seasonal timing. Spring in the Mediterranean, autumn in the United States. Sell into demand, not into a yard period.
- Realistic pricing from day one. The yacht that sits for eighteen months has already depreciated twice as much as the one that sells in six.
What accelerates it
- Over-specified or idiosyncratic interiors that shrink the buyer pool.
- High engine hours without matching maintenance records.
- Lapsed class or flag surveys.
- Missing or contradictory paperwork, a red flag that invites a discount.
The honest arithmetic
Assume a mid-range correction of 15 per cent in year one and 35 per cent by year five, with running costs at 10 per cent of the purchase price each year.
| Purchase price | Value after 1 year | Value after 5 years | 5-year running costs | Total five-year cost | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | EUR 2,000,000 | EUR 1,700,000 | EUR 1,300,000 | EUR 1,000,000 | approx. EUR 1,700,000 | | EUR 5,000,000 | EUR 4,250,000 | EUR 3,250,000 | EUR 2,500,000 | approx. EUR 4,250,000 | | EUR 20,000,000 | EUR 17,000,000 | EUR 13,000,000 | EUR 10,000,000 | approx. EUR 17,000,000 |
The yacht you can afford is rarely the yacht you can afford to own.
The bottom line
A yacht is not an investment, and the moment an owner stops pretending otherwise, the decision gets simpler and better. Buy the hull you can genuinely run. Buy used if the numbers matter more than the new-build smell. Document everything. And remember that the most expensive yacht in any marina is not the one that cost the most. It is the one that sat unsold.
