Bought my 20 foot Monark pontoon with 75 Merc new in 1994, so its now 16 years old. If I sold it today I could probably get about $5000 for the boat motor and trailer IAW Nada. 50-60% depreciation. And that's pretty moderate really.
What keeps me from getting a new boat is the initial stupidly high cost like DJD noted to start the tread. $40 to $70K seems way to much for a toy, especially so if you finance it over 15 years, and then take a 60% depreciating hit on top of that.
Take a $40,000 boat, at 6% for 15 years. Payment is just $337.54, not too bad. At the end of 15 years, you have spent a total of $60,758 on payments of which $20,758 was interest alone. Now realize after paying the $60,758 in payments, you don't have a boat worth $60,758, it deprecitated and might be worth $16,000 based on Nada average depreciation. That's another $24,000 in depreciation lost. So add the total payments to the depreciation and your total sunk costs are $84,758, not including any insurance, registration, or maintenance. Its just outrageous to me. I guess for folks pulling $150K a year or better that's fine.
I think the boating industry and boat makers have priced itself to the point that the ones that go out of business DESERVE IT. To the boat makers that still put out good priduct at $12 to $20K, I say warmest regards to you.
Me........I'm gonna take advantage of the rich folks from now on, and buy the depreciated used boat that they stuck all the money in.
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