COURTESY NEWPORT BOAT SHOW

The recreational marine industry is not in shambles, and the country is not necessarily going into a recession, but the post-pandemic normalization in boat sales is continuing, and one segment in particular is behaving in a noticeable way.

That’s how Courtney Chalmers, vice president of marketing for Boats Group — which owns YachtWorld, Boats.com, Boat Trader and other brands — characterizes the year-over-year data in the company’s Mid-Year Market Index for 2024. Overall, global searches related to boat purchasing were down 7.6% compared with the same period last year, and global sales were down 9.4%.

However, Chalmers told Trade Only Today that searches are still above what they were in 2019, before the world had ever heard of the Covid-19 virus.

“Even though it’s been a steady decline, it’s really just normalizing,” she says. “I think a lot of issues are playing into consumer demand normalizing. There’s interest rates, there’s inflation, there’s people spending money on other things after Covid.”

More notable, Chalmers said, is what people are buying now. There’s a year-over-year spike of nearly 40% in preowned boats that are just a year old. These boats are holding their value because they’re so young, but they’re coming up against deliveries of brand-new models to dealerships that often have better financing deals and purchasing incentives.

“At that point, people are like, OK, well, if I can buy a used boat that’s 1 year old without a price reduction or a brand-new boat with better financing and the dealer is willing to work with me, you go with the new boat,” Chalmers said.

Industry insiders predicted the possibility of this dynamic, she said, back when the pandemic caused a dramatic increase in boat sales. “After we saw the surge, we knew there would be a lot of these boats on the market after Covid,” she said. But so far, coming out of the pandemic, used-boat prices have not adjusted in a way that addresses the problem.

“Somebody is going to have to come down on the price of the used boats,” Chalmers said. “It’s a tough call to make. They still are holding their value. They’re only a year old.”

Another important insight in the data, she said, is that inventory mix matters. The report shows that for the first half of the year, new boats overall are taking longer to sell than last year — 53 days longer on the market — with the year-old boats taking 75 days. However, size and price on new boats are also factors, Chalmers said.

“The main driver for the new-boat sales is the less-than-26-foot segment, with an average sold price of about $82,000,” she said. “A lot of the dealers we talk to say they’re seeing new boats sitting longer. I say, ‘Look at your mix. You have Viking, Jarrett Bay, Regulator. These are higher-end boats that don’t fall into that $82,000 range for a new boat.’ So inventory mix has a big part to play in that data story.”

Chalmers said she also hears some dealers voicing fears about the current market feeling similar to what happened during the Great Recession, when boat sales plummeted to record lows.

Historically speaking, people cut back on discretionary spending in a recession. That includes boats, leading dealers to fear they’ll be stuck with too much inventory as new units arrive for the 2025 model year.

“What we’re hearing from dealers is that the manufacturers are sending more boats,” she said. “I think dealers are nervous about what happened in 2008. I don’t think we’ll see that, but I think it’s an interesting dynamic in the market right now.”