Way back in 2008 we decided that we really wanted to start ‘Living the Dream’ and started our search for the perfect catamaran for us – it took us nearly 2 years to find our ‘Dream’. Searching through hundreds of brokerage sites and the very few private adverts for catamarans that were listed in obscure corners of the internet.

The biggest thing putting us off many boats was the realisation that all these ‘Brokerage Boats’ came at a very high premium, the going rate for a ‘Broker’ selling a catamaran is 10% of the selling price – which when you think about it is a pretty decent game to be in if you can notch up a few sales. Now, catamarans aren’t cheap either, they are basically two boats & hence the reason why they sell for around double the price of a comparable sized mono-hull. In the end we opted for a 40ft Fountaine Pajot Lavezzi,  which was the most we could afford and turned out to be the ideal catamaran for us, we loved her –  we eventually sailed off into the sunset in 2014 leaving the rat race behind and spent what was without doubt the best 5 years of our lives truly ‘Living the Dream’.

Our boat was originally advertised for £218,000 – which equated to a £21,800 pay day for the broker, nice work if you can get it.  We did end up paying much less in the end, but that bitter taste of paying a huge sum in fees lingered for many years even after acquiring her.
5 years later and after sailing over 30,000 miles through Europe, the Canaries, the Caribbean and finally ending up in the Bahamas we wanted to have some ‘Land Time’ once again and decided to put our ‘Dream’ up for sale.
We had two options, using a broker or selling it ourselves and after discussions with a few brokers opted to go it alone. Why ? Because we had just enjoyed 5 years of Nirvana and we wanted someone else to also have that chance, by selling through a broker we would have had to advertise the boat with a 10% premium to end up with the price we were looking for. Every broker we asked came up with a price tag of $225,000 US.  So with a 10% cut for them we would have ended up coming out with $202,500. Instead, we advertised her privately ourselves with an asking price of $200,000 US – and sold her within a month.

Once we had sold our catamaran I then set up a Facebook Group 
‘Catamarans For Sale by Owner – Worldwide’ to try to help other people also save tens of thousands of dollars in the process. It has been a massive success! Once the group hit 21,000 members we decided to launch a website and do things a little more professionally. The daily time and effort involved with administrating the group made this the obvious next step to take.