Buyer-side guidance
Critical Yacht Buying Insights
By Patric Daccache, Independent Yacht Advisor, DubaiReviewed 15 August 2026
Nine independent guides written from the buyer’s side of a yacht transaction. Each one takes a single question a serious buyer eventually has to answer — about a listing, a refit claim, a broker’s incentive, a price movement, a survey, an ownership budget or the decision to stop — and answers it with the evidence a buyer should be holding.
These pages are the shorter, question-led companion to the book. They are written in the same spirit: no vendor claims taken at face value, no numbers invented, and a clear line drawn between what a buyer can establish for themselves and what belongs with a marine lawyer, a surveyor, a tax adviser or a technical manager.
All insights
Broker conversation
93 questions to ask a yacht broker
The broker conversation as an evidence exercise: four states an answer can be in, and the questions that produce either a document or a revealing hesitation.
Read the guideVerification sequence
Yacht buying due diligence
What to verify before survey and contract, in what order, and how each claim becomes a cost, an obligation or a reason to stop.
Read the guideListing analysis
How to analyse a yacht listing
Every material sentence in a listing is a claim with a document behind it or nothing behind it. How to separate specification from condition, read the omissions and leave the page with a written question file.
Read the guideRefit claims
What “fully refitted” actually means
The same phrase covers a cosmetic refresh and a structural rebuild. The seven things that turn a refit claim into something you can price: date, scope, contractor, invoices, oversight, warranty and what was excluded.
Read the guideRepresentation
How yacht broker incentives work
Central agency, co-brokerage and commission decide which information is volunteered and which merely stays undisclosed. Understanding the structure is not an accusation, it is orientation.
Read the guidePrice signals
Price reductions and days on market
A long listing history is not automatically a bargain, and a fresh listing is not automatically strong. What price movement can tell you, what it cannot, and how relistings quietly reset the record.
Read the guideVerification scope
Survey versus due diligence
A clean survey is not a clean transaction. Where the surveyor's mandate ends, which specialists own the remaining questions, and how to sequence the two so money is spent in the right order.
Read the guideCost reality
Hidden costs before buying
Most cost surprises are not exotic. They are known items that nobody put in writing before completion. How to build a first-eighteen-months figure instead of relying on a percentage rule.
Read the guideDecision control
When to walk away
Walking away is a planned outcome, not a failure. Write the criteria down while you are still calm, and the decision stops depending on how the afternoon on board went.
Read the guide
The book
The complete version of this material
These guides cover individual questions. The book covers the whole purchase: brokers, listings, pricing, refits, compliance, survey scope, operating cost and the evidence a buyer should hold before signing anything.