hi I'm Anna-marie this is Kath we're from the narrow boat experience
chances are you have clicked on this video because you would like to buy a
boat we're here at Venetian marina to talk to
Zoe the manager about the process of buying a boat
and we've also bought two narrow boats so we're experts stick around to the end
because we are going to share with you our biggest mistake that we ever made
buying a boat so hopefully you don't make the same
mistake this is Zoe who is the manager here and I wanted to ask you what can
people expect when they come to your boat so all the boats are situated
outside just through these doors at the end we take a few basic details for our
key management system log you in so that we remember you next time you visit us
it records which boats you view and we take your telephone number so it's nice
and simple for you to log in with us you get given a color-coded map so you can
see which boats are under offer sold or unavailable for viewing so you can go
outside take your time and have a look at as many boats as you like obviously
you don't have to pay to view take your time and as in when you need some help
myself and the gentleman in the office are here to answer any questions you
might have
You've seen the boat you want now we're going to ask Zoe what do you do if you like
the boat and you want to put it offer in so you've seen a vessel that you like
outside if you want to take some time away go to the cafe and have a bacon
sandwich or a cup of tea take your time and then that's fine you can put an
offer in via email you can come and talk to us in the office direct or you can
give us a ring on the telephone we're here to help whenever you're ready and
we're whenever you're comfortable to make the offer okay so once you put in
an offer if the offer is accepted the boat is placed under offer and
officially removed from sale so nobody else can view it once the thousand pound
deposit has been left if you require a survey and we always
recommend that you have a survey then we can advise you on some surveys telephone
numbers but we don't push any one individual survey you can use whichever
you wish once the survey is completed we advise you to wait for that report to
come back in writing and then if there is any items on there that you're unsure
of or that you need to support and help with then by all means pop in or email
over and we will go through it with you and guide you to the next stage of the
sales process
so there's lots of boats here today are they all privately owned or are they
owned by venetian marina a mixture of the two so we've got some stock boats
that we've purchased because we have part exchange available and we buy boats
for stock and for cash quick purchases and we also have them on brokerage where
we broke them for private customers so we've got a mixture of the two it's
great really if it's a stock boat because we automatically put a new
four-year boat safety certificate on that vessel and any requirement work
that comes up in any survey we would undertake so it's quite easy with
regards to negotiation there and people were very upfront and transparent people
they know what they're going to receive when they buy one of our vessels
brokerage obviously we're dealing with two sets of private customers and the
key is there again to be transparent upfront and honest and broker a fair
deal everybody in in the negotiation is happy with we spent I think it was a
week at Venetian and everybody was really helpful to us we noticed there's
a lot of private moorings is there any reason in particular that you think
people should choose the Venetian marina to moor at and buy from. Absolutely.
so obviously the amount of stock that we've got available who wants to go and
view a private boat really in the middle of nowhere when you can come to a place
like Venetian and view as many boats here as you want to view you know to
your heart's content sit on them picture yourself enjoying them and realize in
the dream as we say more with us and we've got an on-site cafe run by Andrew
we've got a Chandlery run by Sue and BJ there's a couple of other businesses
narrowboat glass you do stained glass for boats which is fantastic and our
engineering facilities not to mention the fantastic staff as well yeah we
found it really I think I said to somebody the other day because they said
to you kind of 'bunging' it on and I said actually I found Venetian to be casually
respectful
a big thank you to Zoe from Venetian Marina for taking the time to explain
the process of buying a secondhand narrow boat from them we would like to
point out that the process may be slightly different if you're going to
other brokerages of which there are many available throughout the UK for example
some brokerages may ask for a different amount of deposit and they also might
prefer if you ring them in advance to book your appointment to view the boats
so we recommend calling up before you go as we mentioned we've bought two boats
and it was a little bit tongue-in-cheek saying that we're experts we're not
experts at all but there is a reason that both times we bought our boats we
decided to go through a brokerage and one of the reasons was just the security
that we felt going through a brokerage because buying a boat's not like buying
a house or a car there's not the same protection that there is when you buy a
car and you can ring CRT to find out that the boat is
licensed but you can't necessarily find out the logbook of ownership yes so when
you buy a car you have a in the UK certainly there's a v5 logbook that
comes with the car and when you sell the car you have to send off a portion of
the book to the DVLA and they will maintain a list of the previous owners
so that you can then see on the new logbook that gets sent out to you as the
new owner how many previous owners there have been and the address of the
previous owner whereas when you buy a boat you have a transfer of ownership
form which quite frankly could be made by anybody on a word processor now that
you should do that you shouldn't do that but that's why when you're buying a boat
privately which is also an option and there's lots of ways to do that you have
to be 100 percent sure that the boat that you're buying is not under any
finance like a secured loan or and that the person actually does own the boat so
you would expect to see things like receipts for work
and the license information maybe their name on the boat safety certificate that
kind of thing to prove that they've spent money on a vessel that you're
interested in buying because the worst thing that can happen is that you hand
over all your money and then you find out two weeks later that the boat was
stolen yeah so just to hammer home the most important thing is being happy with
the process that you're going through don't be afraid to ask questions of your
broker whilst they are working on behalf of the seller or vendor they are still
trying to take your money they want to complete the sale as much as you do so
you need to make sure that you're happy with their processes and and how easy it
is to get your money back if there's any issues whether you're going to be able
to get any discount after the survey just make sure that you're clear in your
mind whilst you're going through the process and also ask about time scales
because that was one of the things when we were buying you it that we found
really frustrating was that we didn't know how long anything took and it does
sometimes drag on in the process when you're waiting for your survey to come
back and that kind of thing and it's not all of you its fault it was really a
50-50 fault of our and sixty five ninety ten it was a majority of our fault we
felt a little bit insecure asking questions because we didn't want to seem
inexperienced but quite frankly when you walk into a boat with an experienced
broker they can tell whether you know boats on they already know so just ask
away that's our top tip would you say that's the top tip ask lots of questions
yeah ask questions about the boat ask questions about their brokers processes
yeah and just feel comfortable that what you're getting what you see is what
you're getting before you hand over any money yeah that's what we wanted to
share with you so that wraps it up those are our top tips however I have one
extra point for you which is you buy the boat not the brokerage so you have to be
really confident the brokerage that you're that you
understand what their procedures are however if the boat that you think is
right for you is that a brokerage that you never would have considered you have
to go look at that boat and that has happened to us before and in the buying
process and we've had to really just make sure that we're really clear on
what the brokerage wanted because there were certain boats that we were very
interested in so I think the saying is don't cut off your nose to spite your
face have a look at all the boats and understand all the brokerages thank you
for watching tonight hold on hello we promised our biggest mistake that does
not want to do this because we're all fallible and we don't you know we don't
like to share all of our mistakes but when we were buying a boat the first
time our biggest mistake with you it was rushing we thought honestly thought that
four weeks of boat hunting made us very equipped to buy a boat yeah and it
doesn't and so I think our biggest mistake even though we're really happy
we do it and we're glad that we found her having lived on her for three years
yeah our biggest mistake was not understanding the layout of all the
brokerages in England and not understanding where to buy from and what
the procedures were and we found it quite difficult to kind of compile an
extensive list of brokerages for instance like I didn't realize you could
go to Milton Keynes and have a look at their boats and then you could also go
to aqueduct marina and have a look at their boats I kind of only knew the top
one so we we went to the top ones quite a lot yeah when you google or certainly
three to four years ago when you googled boat boat brokerage
the main one that came up was will marina which is why we went there first
and then every time we looked again since we would find more and more
brokerages and a lot of marinas don't necessarily advertise their brokerage
services in terms of being optimized to appear in a search engine
search so that as you go through and you find out where different marinas are and
you look at their websites you'll see that actually they're all selling boats
yeah so we could have literally to get to you it who was at Great Hayward but
she was somewhere off she was part of their sales but she was somewhere else
to get to the somewhere else we probably passed three other boat yards that we
could have popped in we could have rung up and we could have asked to see boats
because because of our inexperience that that mistake was definitely made the one
thing that I noticed at the time was that even though the world is very
Internet focused and it's all about the information you can find online it's not
that way with canals not necessarily I think there are some brokerages like
rugby boats and venetian who are trying to get onto YouTube then and they're
really trying to improve their online presence yeah I don't feel that that was
happening three to four years ago and even now there's still a lot of websites
that I've seen when I've been looking at marinas or brokerages and their web
sites may have been written when the internet first came out and they're
happy with that because boats sell yep thanks for watching today's vlog we hope
that if you are considering buying at a secondhand narrow boat that this has
been useful to you if you have got any questions then please do drop them in
their comments below we are going to put together another vlog about what to look
for when buying a narrow boat so if you want to be notified when we release that
then you have to make sure that you're subscribed and have clicked the
notifications button thanks see you again soon okay