How to make $1mm in the boat business.....?

A friend of mine is relocating to a high desert town east of the mountains and he is looking for a buyer for his yacht brokerage business and book of listings. He's been in the same location for 19 years, has a waterfront office in Seattle and a bunch of covered slips. Anybody crazy enough to want to go into the yacht brokerage business in the Pacific NW can buy his whole gig for $45,000, and even that wouldn't need to be all cash up front. He's probably got enough listings for the eventual commissions to more than generate the purchase price. He's got a bizop ad breaking in the June 7 issue of a local magazine, but prior to that date anybody interested could send me an email and I'd put you on his trail. Just remember the formula for making $1mm in the boat biz

If I ever got tired of my current situation I'd go back to brokering yachts. The field is wide open for the few guys who are willing to work at it and not just planning to sit around waiting for a lucky phone call. There's very good money there, in return for some long hours and hard work. There's even a fairlyh decent "retirement" income there for guys who want to work 15-20 hours a week just to have something to do. Whether to own your own brokerage or not is sort of a push.

You split all your commissions with the house if you don't own the joint- but by the time you rent an office, some moorage (which you may or may not recover from listed boats in a given month), do some advertising, pay for phones, lights, taxes, etc it's about a wash. You can make good money if you have 3-4 top caliber brokers working for you- but because it is about a push to open your own office a lot of the top guys will set up shop down the lake a bit and when they go you lose most of their personal listings shortly thereafter. So for bigger headaches and a possibly bigger potential you open your own business and hire a few borkers. For fewer headaches and about the same amount of money (in a lot of cases) you split commissions with a decent operator and let him or her deal with all the government nonsense and miscellaneous expenses. It isn't hard to make a buck and half a year selling fewer than 2 boats a month, and a few guys will make 2, 3, 4 or more in a very good year. Despite that fact, yacht brokers are like a lot of professions; 20% of the players will make 80% of the sales and earn 85% of the money.

The value in my friend's offer is in the bok of listings and the location. LIke a lot of service businesses, the past clientele is loyal to the past operator rather than to the company name on the sign. I guess that's how you work for 19 years building a business and then decide you can sell out for under $50k.