Sell Your Boat in Greece

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When you decide to sell your boat, the hard part is not finding a buyer. It is finding the one buyer who is ready, funded and serious, and getting them onto the deck before they buy something else. Yacht Brokers Greece lists motor yachts, sailing yachts and catamarans lying anywhere from Corfu to Rhodes, and works them across the Greek marinas and the northern European buyer market at the same time. A well presented boat, priced against real closed sales, typically takes four to eight months and five to ten private viewings to complete. A badly presented one sits for two seasons and then sells at the price it should have carried on day one. What follows is exactly what we do between those two outcomes, what it costs, and what we need from you.

Why Sell Your Boat Through a Broker Rather Than a Classified Ad

The classified route looks free. It is not. It costs you the difference between the price you eventually accept and the price the boat was actually worth, plus every Saturday spent showing a yacht to somebody who was never going to buy it. When you sell your boat through a broker you are buying three things you cannot buy separately: a filtered buyer list, a defensible price, and somebody who is not you doing the negotiating.

Filtering matters more than reach in this market. A listing on a large portal produces enquiries, and most of them are dreamers, tyre kickers and brokers fishing for stock. We qualify before anyone gets a viewing slot – what they have owned or sold before, whether the funds are in place, whether they have read the specification, and when they intend to complete. Owners are always surprised how many enquiries die at that gate, and always relieved that they died before a wasted trip to the marina.

The second thing is the price argument. A private seller quotes a number and defends it with feeling. A broker defends it with closed sales: what comparable hulls, with comparable hours and comparable refit history, actually changed hands for in the last eighteen months. That is an argument a buyer cannot win with a shrug, and it is the main reason brokered boats hold their asking price better than private ones do.

The third is distance. Owners negotiating directly either concede too quickly because they want it finished, or dig in over three thousand euros and lose a funded buyer. A broker takes the emotion out of the room and keeps the deal moving while both sides still want it.

What Happens After You Send Us the Boat Details

The form halfway down this page is the beginning. It asks for everything a serious buyer will eventually ask for anyway – make, model, year, length overall, beam, draft, cabins, berths, heads, engines, hours, fuel, flag, VAT status, asking price and where the boat is lying – because a listing that answers those questions on day one gets a viewing, and a listing that says call for details gets ignored.

Within two working days a broker telephones you. That call covers three things: what the boat is realistically worth today, what needs doing before the photographer arrives, and whether you want it marketed openly or quietly. Plenty of owners would rather their marina neighbours did not know the boat is on the market, and a discreet listing works perfectly well – we market it to our own buyer file and to brokers we trust, rather than to the open portals.

Then we build the listing. Professional photography in the right light, a full written specification taken from the boat rather than from the manufacturer brochure, an honest condition note, and a walkthrough video where the boat justifies one. It is published on our own site, on the portals your buyer actually uses, and circulated to our affiliated brokers along the mainland coast and across the island marinas.

From that point the work is ours. We field and qualify the enquiries, arrange and personally attend every private viewing, handle the offer, manage the survey and the lift out, and drive the sale and purchase agreement through to cleared funds and transferred ownership. You are kept informed at every stage; you are not made to do the job yourself.

Pricing the Boat Before It Goes Live

Every valuation starts with closed sales, not with asking prices. Asking prices tell you what other owners hope for; closed sales tell you what buyers agreed to. We look at comparable hulls of the same model and generation, adjust for engine hours, refit history, flag and VAT position, and then adjust again for where the boat is lying, because a yacht in a serviced Attica marina with an airport forty minutes away is easier to sell than the same yacht in a remote island harbour.

Condition moves the number more than owners expect. Tired canvaswork, a cracked gelcoat repair, cushions that smell of damp and an engine bay that has not been wiped in two years will together take more off the offer than the cost of putting them right. So will a missing paper trail. Buyers pay for confidence, and every gap in the history is a discount they will ask for.

We give you a range and the reasoning behind it, in writing, and we tell you plainly when we think the number you have in mind is wrong. Listing high to leave negotiating room is the most expensive mistake in this business. The strongest enquiries arrive in the first three weeks a boat is on the market, and a boat priced fifteen per cent above the market misses that window entirely, then chases the price down for the rest of the year. Price it correctly on day one and the market comes to you.

You can see how we present and price boats that are already on the market on our yachts for sale in Greece pages, and the same standard is applied to yours.

Paperwork, VAT and Flag: What to Have Ready

Greek and EU buyers will ask for the same documents every time, and having them ready is worth weeks. Start with proof of ownership: the original bill of sale or builder certificate, and the current registration or flag documentation. Then the VAT position – the original invoice showing VAT paid in the EU, or the evidence of deemed VAT paid status, or a clear statement that the boat is VAT unpaid and why. VAT is the single most common reason a deal stalls at the last minute.

Next, the operational papers: insurance certificate, current Greek cruising documentation where it applies, the transit log or DEKPA if the boat is foreign flagged, the engine service records, and any charter licence history if the boat has been in commercial use. Charter history is not a problem, but it must be declared, because it changes the tax treatment and the survey expectations.

Finally, the practical file: manuals, keys, tender and outboard papers, liferaft and firefighting service certificates, and the inventory of what is included and what the seller is taking. Write that inventory down early. More arguments happen in the last week of a sale over a dinghy, a chartplotter and a set of fenders than over the price of the boat.

The Greek authorities publish the current rules, and we work to them on every transfer:

Hellenic Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy - registration and flag rules

Hellenic Coast Guard - vessel documentation and port formalities

Where We Sell, and Who Actually Buys

The boat does not have to move to be sold. We market it where it lies and bring the buyer to it, which is why our broker network runs the length of the mainland coast and out into the islands rather than sitting in one office in Piraeus. Attica is the commercial centre, because Athens International Airport puts a buyer from Munich, London or Warsaw on the pontoon within a few hours of leaving home, but we sell boats lying in the Ionian, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, the Sporades and the north just as regularly.

The buyers themselves are mostly not Greek. Northern Europeans buying a second season boat, British and Irish owners moving into the Mediterranean, Germans and Austrians buying catamarans for family cruising, and an increasing number of buyers relocating a boat from a saturated market into Greek waters where the season is longer and the berthing is cheaper. That is the audience our marketing is written for, in their language where it matters.

Getting a buyer to the boat is part of the job. We coordinate flights, transfers and marina access, meet them ourselves, and make sure the boat is clean, powered, cool and open when they arrive rather than shuttered under a winter cover. Where the boat lies awkwardly for visitors, we say so early and plan around it.

Alimos is the busiest of the Attica marinas and has its own page for owners berthed there: sell your boat in Alimos Marina.

Athens International Airport - flight and transfer planning for viewings

Viewings, Offers and Getting to Completion

A private viewing is by appointment, with a qualified buyer, and a named broker present throughout. We do not hand out marina gate codes, we do not run open days, and we do not send strangers to a boat unaccompanied. Owners are welcome to attend, and many prefer not to – buyers speak more freely when the owner is not standing behind them, and what they say in that hour is the most useful market intelligence you will get.

An offer arrives in writing, subject to survey and to satisfactory inspection, usually with a deposit of ten per cent held in a client account. We present it with our reading of the buyer: how firm they are, what else they are looking at, and how much room there is. You accept, decline or counter, and we go back with a reasoned position rather than a number plucked out of the air.

The survey is where deals wobble. A surveyor will find something on every boat ever built, so the question is never whether there is a list, but which items on it are genuinely material. We go through the report with you, separate the real defects from the wear and tear, and negotiate a settlement that is usually a contribution rather than a full repair. Then the sale and purchase agreement, the balance of funds, the deletion from the old registry and the transfer of ownership. Most completions run three to six weeks from accepted offer.

How Long a Boat Takes to Sell in Greece

Correctly priced and properly presented, a boat in Greece takes four to eight months from listing to cleared funds. Season matters: enquiries build from January, peak between March and June as buyers try to get afloat for the summer, go quiet in August when everyone is on the water, and pick up again in September and October among buyers who have just spent a fortnight on a chartered boat and decided to own one.

The practical consequence is that a boat listed in November has the whole buying season ahead of it, while a boat listed in July has missed most of it. If you are deciding whether to sell now or wait, listing before Christmas is almost always better than listing in spring, because the photography, the specification and the survey questions are all resolved before the buyers arrive.

What actually causes long delays is rarely the market. It is an asking price set on hope, a missing VAT invoice, a boat that cannot be viewed because it is shrink wrapped ashore, or an owner who is uncontactable for three weeks at the moment an offer lands. Every one of those is fixable in advance, and fixing them is most of what the first broker call is for.

If you are still weighing up whether to use a broker at all, the Yacht Brokers Greece front page sets out how our brokers work and what we sell.

Sell My Yacht in Greece: Doing It From Abroad

Most of the owners who ask us to sell my yacht in Greece do not live here. The boat came south for a season, or for a decade, and the owner is in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands or further afield. That is completely normal and it does not slow anything down, provided somebody on the ground has authority to act.

Practically, we hold a set of keys, arrange access with the marina office, run the boat up for viewings, meet the surveyor, supervise the lift out and the antifoul, and photograph anything you need to see before you make a decision. You approve the listing, the price and every offer by email; you do not need to be standing on the pontoon for any of it. Owners who ask us to sell my yacht in Greece from abroad routinely complete the whole transaction without flying over once.

What we do need is a clean chain of authority. A signed listing agreement, a written mandate that lets us show and represent the boat, and clarity on who signs the bill of sale – you, a company, or a representative under power of attorney. Where the boat is owned through a company, get the corporate documents and the certificate of good standing in order early, because that is the step that delays completions.

If the answer to sell my yacht in Greece is that you would rather it were handled quietly, entirely at arm’s length, and reported to you in writing every fortnight, that is precisely the service. Tell us at the first call and that is how it runs.

Yachts For Sale Through Our Brokers

These are boats owners brought us exactly the way you are about to: one named broker, full specification, professional photography, and private viewings by appointment only.

Azimut 78 Fly for sale 2011 — AOP

2011 · 24.5 m · Porto Carras Marina, Sithonia

EUR 1,800,000

Hallberg-Rassy 53 for sale 2002 — LA PEROUSE

2002 · 16.44 m · Leros

EUR 489,000

Lagoon 46 for sale 2020

2020 · 13.99 m · Olbia

EUR 489,000

Sunseeker Manhattan 66 for sale 2019 — BRIGHT 7

2019 · 20.8 m · Bodrum

EUR 1,650,000

See every yacht for sale through Yacht Brokers Greece

Sell Your Boat: Frequently Asked Questions

How much commission do you charge to sell a boat in Greece?

Five per cent of the achieved sale price on boats up to one million euros, agreed in writing before the boat is listed and payable only on completion. There is no listing fee, no photography charge and no monthly retainer. Above one million euros the rate is agreed case by case.

How long does it take to sell a yacht in Greece?

Four to eight months from listing to cleared funds is typical for a correctly priced boat, across five to ten private viewings. Completion itself runs three to six weeks from an accepted offer. Overpriced boats routinely take two seasons and finish below where they started.

Does the boat need to be moved to a particular marina?

No. We market the boat where it lies and bring qualified buyers to it, anywhere from the Ionian to the Dodecanese. Attica marinas sell fastest because Athens airport is close, but island and northern berths sell perfectly well when the access is planned in advance.

Can I sell my yacht in Greece if I live abroad?

Yes, and most of our sellers do. We hold keys, arrange marina access, run the viewings, meet the surveyor and supervise the lift out, while you approve the price and every offer by email. Many owners complete the entire sale without travelling to Greece at all.

What paperwork do I need before listing?

Proof of ownership, current registration or flag documents, and clear evidence of the VAT position. Add insurance, engine service records, any charter licence history, liferaft and firefighting certificates, and a written inventory of what stays with the boat. VAT gaps stall more deals than any other document.

Do you sell catamarans and sailing yachts as well as motor yachts?

Yes. Motor yachts, sailing yachts, catamarans, trawlers and large tenders all move through the same process. Catamarans in particular attract northern European family buyers, and demand in Greek waters has been consistently stronger than the supply for several seasons now.