Buying CHEAP Boats (Everything you NEED to know)

A hot topic is always going to be where to find a cheap boat to restore

I guess it's really going to depend on how much of a restoration do you really want

Places that I look at for a boat. I mean, websites, you're going to find Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, stuff like that

There is eBay, but I really don't think that you can find a cheap boat to restore on eBay

mainly because eBay is a company that is meant to make money

and they make a ton of money just gouging everybody that puts stuff on there

I mean, you lose like 30% selling stuff on eBay of whatever you make

So let's say you sell something for $100 bucks on eBay. Well, after you factor in all the charges and stuff, I mean, you might make $70, $65

bucks, something like that. When it comes to a really cheap boat, usually people are not trying to spend money in

order to get rid of that boat. You might be able to find something on Boat Trader or something like that

but I think the best way in order to find a cheap boat to restore is going to be either one driving around looking for one

So just drive around in a place that it has a lot of boats like it's close to the water or close to a lake

And you can usually find a house or a yard or a shop or something

And you can see a bunch of boats sitting around or maybe you find someone that's got a boat that has clearly been sitting in their yard for a really long time

And you can kind of just go knock on the door. Obviously, you know, be careful walking up on people's properties

but knock on the door and say, hey, you know, you want to get rid of that boat or something like that

And then just shoot them an offer, you know, and see what the deal is. When it comes to doing this, I think a couple of things that you want to make sure of are, first of all, title issues

So you want to make sure that there's a clean title to the boat. Otherwise, you're going to be putting in a lot of work and a lot of time, a lot of money into something that you

can't even title when it's done, that's something that you don't want to deal with

Also, if it comes with a trailer, then you're going to want to make sure that you've got

a title for the trailer or that you can register that trailer. Because if you can't register the trailer, then you can't really use the boat

You can't sell the boat. You can't really do anything outside of buying another trailer

I mean, one of the issues that I had with my little boat was that exact thing is it was an older trailer

I mean, the boat's in 1979. So who knows when or where the trailer came from

Obviously, I had to put a bunch of stuff into the boat, into the trailer. I mean, I had to do, you know, the tongue jack

I had to do the winch, had to do lights, all that kind of stuff. But there wasn't a tag to the trailer

So there wasn't a, you know, a VIN for the trailer. So I couldn't go down to the DMV and register it

Therefore, I've got this boat on a trailer that I can't even take on the road

And so I took all the receipts, told them everything I did, showed them pictures of the

trailer and then I had to get the boat off of the trailer and take the trailer down to a way station

and get it weighed. Then I took that back to the DMV and was able to get a title for it and

then get the trailer registered. That's one of the things you want to make sure of is that you

have a title or a way to register the trailer if the boat comes with the trailer. Now how much of a

restoration do you want to do? That's probably a better question than where to find the boat. Because

is like I said, you can go and look around at marinas and stuff and say, hey, do you have a boat here that hasn't been in the water in five, six, seven, ten years

And a lot of marinas are going to say, yeah, that boat over there. And then you can ask them, you know, who owns it

Do you think they'd sell it? And the marina can contact them or, you know, maybe someone there at the marina owns the boat

And you can kind of ask them if they're interested in getting rid of it

And that would be a way to acquire the boat. But how much of a restoration do you want to do

that's going to be the main question. Before I even consider the boat

I want to make sure that it's a boat that has value. You don't want to restore a boat that doesn't have any value

once you get done restoring it. You know, name brand boats, good boats

older Makos, CVs, some of the yellow fins, Boston Whalers, parkers, like these boats have a good name

because they have a really, really good haul that once it's, restored, it has value because it's a really nice boat

You don't want to restore something that doesn't have that much value because it was a

massive production line boat where let's say there's a hundred thousand of these boats out

there that people can get a dime a dozen and you don't want to go and spend five, six

10 grand putting all this effort and time and products into the boat to bring it up to

snuff and then, you know, now the boat's worth five grand after you put 10 grand in it

I would look at five main things being, number one, the engine

You know, if you've got a boat that doesn't have a working engine, then that is a massive expense that you're going to have to deal with later on down the road

You've got to get rigging. If the rigging's not in the boat, you've got to get all the stuff that goes to the engine

So that could end up costing you five, 10, 15, 20, 30 grand trying to repower the boat

if the engine on the boat doesn't work. And make sure that either you've got a viable engine or you've got a way to

get an engine to put on the boat because that's one of your biggest expenses

The next thing I'm going to be looking at transoms is the transom rotten because if the

transom is rotten, that's another big expense. Second thing, you're going to want to look at the stringers in the boat to make sure that those

aren't rotten, an integral part of the boat, and that would be a massive expense to fix

Then I would look at the fuel tank because fuel tank is going to be a massive expense, and then I would make sure that the floor is all good

You know, there's no soft spots. There not an issue with the deck that you going to have to cut it out and redo it because those are going to be the five things that are going to cost you the most money when you doing a restore As long as the transom not going to fall off and you got a decent engine you can you know use a boat that got a soft floor That not that big of a deal

Cosmetic stuff, that's something else that you probably don't even need to worry about as much

because that stuff's all little things. You know, if the teatop canvas is cut or you got to do

some restringing of it, maybe there's a couple nicks on the gel coat, stuff like that

that cosmetic stuff is not going to stop you from using the boat. So you can get a cheaper boat that's in rougher shape

but does that play into what you're really looking to get? Something else that I think is probably, you know

a feature is going to be all the stuff that's in the boat. If it's got broken switches

if it's got, you know, older electronics, if it doesn't have a radio, all that kind of stuff

that stuff isn't really a factor in the cost of the boat

You can get a boat that has, none of that stuff in there and either you can put it in there or you don't have to put it in there

It's all about what you want, but that is going to be one of your bigger expenses are the electronics

and that stuff that goes in the boat or if you don't want to put that stuff in there, then it's not

going to be an expense at all. Hurricane boats are something that people are starting to talk about

I mean, we just had a bunch of hurricanes come through. There was Idalia, there was Lee, there was a couple other ones that

just went through recently. So looking at a hurricane boat is another option

I've done a couple hurricane boats. Some of them can be a lot of work depending on what you want the boat to look like when you're done with it

Or if you're just looking to have the boat just to use. So back to the cosmetic thing, if you're just looking to have a boat to use as long as the engine's good

then yeah, you can pick up a hurricane boat. depending on what happened to the boat

So if the boat was fully submerged, now that's something that I probably would stay away from

You're going to have to deal with the engine being a big problem. You're going to have to deal with all of the wiring in the boat that's going to be a problem

You're going to have to deal with pretty much everything. I mean, now is the haul water log that you've got water in the fuel tank

A fully submerged boat is going to be a big project. Now, if a boat just got washed away and, let's say

it was on a trailer and it got washed into some mangroves

let's say it got pushed up against a wall or something like that, and it just got all scratched up

That's cosmetic stuff. That's not the engine being underwater and the boat being underwater

where all the wiring, the electronics, everything on the boat that is electrical is going to give you a problem down the road

Yeah, you can save the engines. I mean, we've gotten engines to work after they went underwater

The problem with that is, is now everything electrical on the engine

is compromised and depending on how you use the boat will depend on the reliability of that engine

So once an engine goes underwater, these days, I mean, it's not like we're talking about

engines that are carbureted anymore where you just clean out the carburetor and, you know

you've got some ignition coils, state or stuff like that. Minimal thing, minimal electronics

Now you've got electronic throttle bodies, electronic shift actuators, you've got sensors

all over the engine, super expensive computers that operate all the sensors and the shifting

and the throttling of the engine. And once that stuff goes underwater, it's all compromised

You can clean it all off. You can oil the engine and get it to run. I guess what I'm trying

to say is that once you clean it off and get it to run, a year from now, all those electrical

components that went underwater are going to start failing. I mean, your computer, the throttle

body, the shift actuators, all that stuff is going to start to fail depending on how long

and how deep the engine was underwater. How much are you really willing to spend on the engine

in order to replace all those electrical components? You don't want to be 30 miles offshore and

have the throttle body fail or the computer fail and be a drift out there because you had this

electrical component that was underwater. So that's definitely a factor that I would be

considering is was the engine fully submerged? I mean if you're on a lake and you're not going

offshore then okay that's a different story because if something fails on the engine and you've got

towboat or boat US or something like that you just have to have a bad day because you got to get

towed back in but if you're going offshore that's a risk that's a that's a safety hazard

There is no way there's no test there's no method there's nothing that you can

do in order to say whether the part is good or whether the part is bad or if it's going to fail

or if it's not going to fail. That's just something to keep in mind with a fully submerged

engine. You definitely don't want one that's at. If someone said that the engine went underwater and

they pulled it out of water and now it's been sitting for a week, a month, two months, three months

that's a problem. You're going to spend hours and hours and hours chasing your tail with electrical

problems, potentially mechanical problems, your rings are going to be rusted, the valves

are going to be rusted, I mean, a whole slew of potential problems to deal with that are going

to exceed the value of the engine. Whereas once you count in the parts that you put on the engine

you could probably go out and find a used engine of the same horsepower, brand, all that kind

of stuff, and just save yourself all the time. And then also, if the whole boat was sunk

then plan on rewiring it because they'll have transfer lugs or, you know

transfer junction bars. And then also just all that wiring is going to be compromised

It may not be a problem, but it could be a problem. So you might as well just count on rewiring that A lot of the components like say the builds pump float switch that kind of stuff you know that stuff should all be fine because it meant to live down in the water

Again, it's a 50-50. There's no test. You might be able to make a work. It might work for a week

It might work for a year. It might work for 10 years. You never know

If you're good with your hands and you know how to fix stuff, I mean, we have a whole boaters program that teaches people how to do all

this stuff and then also gives you the resources to kind of figure those kinds of things out

then those projects probably aren't as daunting. And you can take the risk of whether the parts

work or they don't work because it's not that big of a deal that the live well goes out a year

after you have the boat and you have to replace a live well. That's part of owning a boat anyway

Now when it comes to finding the hurricane boats, I think auction is going to be the best way

I've never even done one of the auctions. I've never gotten the auction boat from a hurricane boat

So that is something that I would like to do, just to go through the process to be able to show you a little bit more of the process

But I know there's people that do that. So that's one way

The other way is insurance companies, but most of the insurance companies do the auction thing

So you kind of have to go the auction route in order to find that hurricane boat. Unless you find someone that has a boat that went through the hurricane

hurricane they can tell you about what happened and everything like that other than that i think that's

where you're going to find how to find the boat what to look for now the cost obviously goes back to

everything that we talked about whether if you got to do a transom if you got to do a fuel tank if you

got to do an engine those are your big things everything else is just going to be you know

hundred dollars here hundred dollars there hundred dollars here and i think the best way to to kind of

figure in that factor is to look at the boat. And as long as those top five are good

then you can go ahead and start looking at the boat and making a list. You want to go around the

boat, make a list of all the parts that you're going to need, and then kind of take some

measurements on the boat to see how much wire you're going to need if you're doing a rewire

or anything like that. And then when you get home, you can just start looking on Amazon, looking at

West Marine, trying to source all the components and things that you're going to need to do to the

boat. That way you'll have an idea of what your total cost is going to be when it comes to

putting the boat together and trying to restore it. I know I got a couple pictures here of a couple

of people that have restored a boat. Austin here. Let's see, he's got a 16 foot lund

He said he put three grand in the boat and it looks pretty rough. I mean, there doesn't look like

there's much going on here. A lun. I think it's an aluminum hall. Looking at the picture here

you got a bunch of foam in between the, I guess you'd consider those to be bulkheads

mainly where the seats are going to be. Yeah, once he took the console

it looks like it was all rotten off, had an old Johnson on there. I'm not sure what year this boat is

but wires are all just kind of strapped to the side of the boat there. The wood where you sit

looks like it's rotten, and the whole console, I mean, that's starting to rot out

So once he got done with it, I mean, he did a really good job on this

Took that Johnson off, got himself a Yamaha, really smart move, and set the fuel tank down into there and basically made it to where you can walk all the way around the boat

made a console, carpeted everything. That's really slick. I mean, made compartments there on the left and the right side of the boat

I do like that. I would like to see how the drain systems that he put in there is

I wonder how much I changed the ride of the boat. I'm sure it didn't change that much

but moving that console forward, he moved the console forward. I wonder where he put the batteries

Austin did a really good job with that. I mean, for three grand too, that's not bad either

The 50 Yamaha was definitely the play. Now, let's see. I got another one here to look at

This one was Kyle a 1958, 30-foot Owens. He didn't say how much he put into the boat

but this looks like a pretty big project. a lot of wood on that boat

Yeah, that looks like a big project. You are working with wood

so that's a lot better than having to do a ton of fiberglass

But now we've got a couple of pictures of it in the water. A whole lot cleaner. So it looks like it was mainly a lot of woodwork

but that's just a couple pictures that I have here. I mean, the boat looks really good once it's in the water

totally different than a lot of the boats that I'm used to seeing. But it looks really good

It looks really good. Now, I didn't say how much the Owens was

And I mean, we kind of talked about this, but coming up with the estimate and how I would come up with that estimate for doing a boat restoration, time is something that is very, very difficult to estimate on how long it's going to take something

Like if you've got to go to work Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, and then you're trying to do this restoration project from 5.30 to 9 o'clock at night every night

and then Saturdays and Sundays, that can definitely be more difficult to figure out how long

it's going to take and then, you know, what all you're going to want to do. Going back to what I said in the beginning with the five different things being engine

transom, stringers, deck, and the fuel tank. If all five of those are good, then like I said, you can go and take a list and write down

everything that you need. does it need a new teetop canvas does it need to be wet sanded compounded stuff like that

does it need new electronics does it need a stereo does it need rewired do all the pumps

need to be replaced does it need a battery what exactly does it need a new dash panel Do you need new switches for all your electronics You going to have to go through the boat with a piece

of paper and a pen and make an actual list of everything that the boat needs. And then that way

you can go home and start researching that stuff. Look on Amazon, look on eBay, look on everything

to try and find out all those things that you need and put a price on it. And then you can get yourself a total

of what your estimate is going to be and how much money you're going to sink in parts on the boat

But again, without the dedicated time to do it, it's going to be how big of a project are you willing to take on

Obviously, if you don't have the time, you don't want to do a trance. You don't want to do a repower because that's too much money

if you have to replace the engine. If you've got to do the fuel tank, again, that's a big price

So staying away from those or just estimating that. Now, how to get an estimate on Transom, how to get an estimate on a fuel tank, that kind of thing

On the fuel tank, you're going to need to look at the fuel tank and on the top of the tank, there's usually a tag

Some of them, depending on how the label was made, be careful when you wipe them off because you can wipe off the actual print or the ink that was put on there to show what the capacity is

Now, once you get the capacity of the tank, sometimes you have to take a light or a mirror and put the mirror down in there and use the light to kind of like try and see

what that is and how what the total capacity of the tank is but generally it used to be like

ten get ten dollars a gallon so for a hundred gallon tank it was going to cost a thousand bucks

depending on the access to the tank is going to determine the labor and cost of materials to

actually replace that tank you're going to need the fill hose potentially a fuel sender

some of them come with senders some of them do not depends on who makes it a lot of times

It has to be a welder that makes it. Like you need to get a custom-made tank

unless you've got a production line boat that you can get a production-type tank in

That's basically going to be the way to figure out how much is going to cost to redo that specific boat

Now, is boat flipping a profitable side hustle? Do you have a place to work on the boat

Do you have the tools to work on the boat? And then do you have the time to work on the boat

So those three things are kind of going to factor in on whether it's going to be profitable

to you or if it is not going to be profitable. For me, I've always had good luck, but I've always been working on boats all the time

Like, that's my main thing. My main gig is fixing boats. So I have all the tools

I have access to the boats. I have access to the parts on the boats

I usually had time to do it. And if you're working Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, and you've only got your afternoons and

the weekends, it could take six months, 12 months to do. do the boat. And that makes it not profitable because let's say you get a boat for a thousand

bucks and you put six, seven grand in it and now the boat's worth 20. Well, if it took you 12 months

to do it and you only made an extra, you know, 10 grand, 13 grand, it's hard to say whether that

was profitable or not because it took you 12 months to do it. You're spending your

afternoons and your weekends working on it. Can you just find another job that you can work weekends

or, you know, work in the afternoon and make 10 grand over 12 months? You know, that's, that's kind of

where it factors into, is it profitable? Is it not profitable? Let's say you buy one for five

and all you have to do is clean it up, replace a couple pumps, and you're in it total for

six, seven grand, but now it's worth 15. Well, if it only took it

you three months to do it and you can sell it and make eight grand and you can do that four times in a

year well now you just made an extra 24,000 and it didn't take the same amount of time of consuming

every minute of your time that you're not at your nine to five then yeah it's going to be profitable

you just have to be very selective on what kind of boat you're doing and what boats you do it's a lot

easier to say no to a lot of boats than it is to take one on and find out later that

it's not going to be a good one. It's not going to be profitable. And that's pretty much how I did it

I just had the boats worked on them and it was very profitable for me. That's actually how I bought a

house and kind of progressed through life was by having the boats because your nine to five is

usually not going to be that profitable as far as like growing yourself financially, I guess you'd

say. So for me, yeah, the boats was always always the best side gig for me. And that's pretty much why

we made Boaters Academy that we have at boarding and boating.com. And we're actually kind of changing that

So it's no longer an academy. It's actually becoming a program. And I'm actually building it out

to be a bigger resource. So it's going to have more of connections, more features. There's an

app to it right now where there's messaging so you can even message me and we're really putting

more into the resources and making it a bigger resource on how to save money how to do all these

projects so if you do get yourself a boat and you want to get into flipping when it comes to rewiring

the boat and putting all new electronics and that kind of stuff in there there's courses step-by-step

how to's to show you exactly how to do that so you know if you want to check that out that would be a way

for you to cheaply get into doing the side hustle of fixing and restoring boats and then selling them

and potentially make yourself an extra 10, 15, 20, 30 grand a year based on how much work you want to put

into it and the boats that you have access to, you can pretty much take it from a side gig to

turn it into your main gig and it can definitely be profitable if you're into restoring boats