Buy a boat slip?

You're definitely in a great area, 12 miles to St Michaels, Rock Hall, 19 miles to Annapolis. I actually bought a slip with your same intention of getting my money back at the end, which I did. You're ok until there is an assessment. Then all bets are off. It's like poker or the stock market, know when to walk away and know when to run. If you really like the slip you're buying, much like your boat, it's worth it. There's very few if any making any money on either one.

Yeah that's the thing, so close too everything and I only live 5 miles away from the boat.

I am not trying to make anything on this or treat it like an investment. I would like to just save a bit of coin with all the local marina's going up so much so fast. Safe Harbor (Mears) up 40% this year alone next is going to be even more. Bay Bridge isn't going to save anything there also ~9K and going up more over the next three years. And in this area it is only going to go up even more over time. This might be a way of slowing that down. But to everyone's point the assessments are the killer or game breaker as it were.
 
Our marina is a condo association and I've owned two different slips there over the past 20+ years. Back in the early 2000's a 60' covered slip was worth $60k, now that same slip is worth $25k. The plus side is that you never get bumped from your slip and all of our friends are our permanent neighbors. We can also rent them for the winter or any other length of time and collect the income. The marina also offers haul out, winter storage and fuel discounts to owners.

The downside is the assessments to repair the pool, pave the driveway, repair bulkheads, replace the fuel tanks etc... Luckily our assessments have stayed the same for the last 20 years but they do make owning vs renting pretty much a wash. Our property taxes are only $230/year. You should ask the owners over at Piney how much they were all assessed to replace the covered shed. I heard it was in the $80k range!

A condo marina is only as good as the board of directors, that you help to appoint.

Not sure on the Shed, but I know that some of the floating dock conversions were 20K a slip. I am ok with that one if I actually benefit from it. Piney is actually in pretty good shape right now. If I can get a slip for ~30K and in a few years switch to a floating dock as a result I am ok with that. Also to your point I also think owning is a wash with renting as well. But to your other point, I wasn't thinking of the fuel dock, that may not be alright and would be a deal breaker as that can be astronomical.


.
 
Last edited:
I would not buy in a marina that I would also have to pay a lease to as well. If you only own the slip and not the real estate adjacent you don't have full control. Similar to buying a hangar on an airport. I always rented because when it was time to make a change all I did was give notice and clean out the hangar. If I owned and wanted to sell I would be at the mercy of the market at the time. There is a marina next to Benicia City Marina called Glen Cove. There the slis are available for rent or purchase. What happens when the channel silts in and the Marina can't get it dredged? You are stuck with a slip you can not use or sell. Too much risk for the perceived savings.
CD
 
I would not buy in a marina that I would also have to pay a lease to as well. If you only own the slip and not the real estate adjacent you don't have full control. Similar to buying a hangar on an airport. I always rented because when it was time to make a change all I did was give notice and clean out the hangar. If I owned and wanted to sell I would be at the mercy of the market at the time. There is a marina next to Benicia City Marina called Glen Cove. There the slis are available for rent or purchase. What happens when the channel silts in and the Marina can't get it dredged? You are stuck with a slip you can not use or sell. Too much risk for the perceived savings.
CD

Where I am looking at the Slip is purchased and not a purchased lease back. That makes no sense what so ever to me. But to your point of the channel silting over and needing dredging? That is something else I did not think of either.

Great questions, fuel tanks and dredging. Those are huge expense's for sure and not something I want to be part of. So now I have even more questions should the slip owner accept my offer.

THANK YOU GUYS!
 
I would not buy in a marina that I would also have to pay a lease to as well. If you only own the slip and not the real estate adjacent you don't have full control. Similar to buying a hangar on an airport. I always rented because when it was time to make a change all I did was give notice and clean out the hangar. If I owned and wanted to sell I would be at the mercy of the market at the time. There is a marina next to Benicia City Marina called Glen Cove. There the slis are available for rent or purchase. What happens when the channel silts in and the Marina can't get it dredged? You are stuck with a slip you can not use or sell. Too much risk for the perceived savings.
CD
Excellent. Personally, I would not own a slip. The ultimate hole in the water. Only because I tend to be impetuous. If I want to sell, I want it gone now. I don’t want to sell a boat, then still have a slip to sell after. But that’s just me.
 
Although it seems daunting, don't get too hung up on these things as they ultimately add value to your investment. As I mentioned before, it's all in how good the board is at managing (your) money. My marina has spent millions on upgrades and repairs over the last few years and our assessments have not changed.

There's also a waitlist for buyers of our 60' covered slips.
 
Where I am looking at the Slip is purchased and not a purchased lease back. That makes no sense what so ever to me. But to your point of the channel silting over and needing dredging? That is something else I did not think of either.

Great questions, fuel tanks and dredging. Those are huge expense's for sure and not something I want to be part of. So now I have even more questions should the slip owner accept my offer.

THANK YOU GUYS!
It actually happened to the place next to us. They where out of commission for a couple of years. Boats had to sit over the winter as they could not get them out.
 
Excellent. Personally, I would not own a slip. The ultimate hole in the water. Only because I tend to be impetuous. If I want to sell, I want it gone now. I don’t want to sell a boat, then still have a slip to sell after. But that’s just me.

Even if you sold your boat you could still rent the slip and either make money or break even until it sold. Assuming you made those calculations when you bought it, making it feasible to buy or not.
 
Although it seems daunting, don't get too hung up on these things as they ultimately add value to your investment. As I mentioned before, it's all in how good the board is at managing (your) money. My marina has spent millions on upgrades and repairs over the last few years and our assessments have not changed.

There's also a waitlist for buyers of our 60' covered slips.

Yeah just good question(s) to ask, who is responsible and the like. But to your point, it's not totally on you, meaning there are 100+ other slips that are also in the same quandary together should that come about. I agree not to let every little possibility stop you from getting a slip. I think if that were the case there wouldn't be so many boat owners in the first place. Just a lot of great points made here.
 
I would not buy in a marina that I would also have to pay a lease to as well. If you only own the slip and not the real estate adjacent you don't have full control. Similar to buying a hangar on an airport. I always rented because when it was time to make a change all I did was give notice and clean out the hangar. If I owned and wanted to sell I would be at the mercy of the market at the time. There is a marina next to Benicia City Marina called Glen Cove. There the slis are available for rent or purchase. What happens when the channel silts in and the Marina can't get it dredged? You are stuck with a slip you can not use or sell. Too much risk for the perceived savings.
CD
This happens on owner owned slips in my area. Most are in small artificial canals that have been dredged. And they don’t collect enough dues in their HOA to dredge them for maintenance. Some people have 60’-80’ of dock space right out their back door, but only 2’-3’ of water depth getting in and out of the canal. We passed on a house that I really wanted due to this very reason. I would have to time the use of my boat around the tides.

The HOA would rather spend money on green grass instead of maintaining the feature that sets them apart from every other housing association in the country.
 
The harbor that @Steve S is referencing is just north of us. It sits mostly empty and there are always ads for people trying to give away the slips they purchased to get out from under the "maintenance" fees, which are as expensive as our slip rental, as well as the killer assessment to rebuild their docks.
 
The harbor that @Steve S is referencing is just north of us. It sits mostly empty and there are always ads for people trying to give away the slips they purchased to get out from under the "maintenance" fees, which are as expensive as our slip rental, as well as the killer assessment to rebuild their docks.
You mean the docks that are hardly used? :) That place just never took off.
1000 years ago, my grandfather boated out of there way before NP was around. His house was just up the road.

These things are all about the management. The place I bot from in South Haven seemed really well run and the people liked it there.
 
The best way to own your own slip is to purchase a home with water frontage. The home will appreciate over time and in many cases the property taxes on the home will be lower than slip fees if you own the home for an extended period of time. We lived on Spring Lake for 45 years and our property taxes were limited by law to inflation with a not to exceed cap. Taxes were about 7800 a year. Could not rent slips for that in our area. Two 50 foot slips run about $10,000 a year at today's rates.
 
Last edited:
The harbor that @Steve S is referencing is just north of us. It sits mostly empty and there are always ads for people trying to give away the slips they purchased to get out from under the "maintenance" fees, which are as expensive as our slip rental, as well as the killer assessment to rebuild their docks.
I was speaking about the facility that JT had mentioned in (I believe) Racine that one of his family members is located at.
 
The best way to own your own slip is to purchase a home with water frontage. The home will appreciate over time and in many cases the property taxes on the home will be lower than slip fees if you own the home for an extended period of time. We lived on Spring Lake for 45 years and our property taxes were limited by law to inflation with a not to exceed cap. Taxes were about 7800 a year. Could not rent slips for that in our area.

Ah yeah, sometimes that is not an option. I am on the water but can only get my CC to the dock. Pretty much the whole creek and part of the bay would need to be dredged to get my boat in there.
 
Ah yeah, sometimes that is not an option. I am on the water but can only get my CC to the dock. Pretty much the whole creek and part of the bay would need to be dredged to get my boat in there.
It pays to look into that before you buy. My neighbor has a dock that is unusable for years at a time because of shoals and water level fluctuations. Our dock sits on a drop off and has 5' of water at the front, 15 feet in the middle and 24 feet at the end. In 45 years of living there we saw two Lake Michigan high water records and also the all time low water level. Never once were we unable to use our slips. Our home was the site of a commercial saw mill in the late 1800s to the turn of the century. Tug boats were slipped were we kept our boats many years later. Spring Lake has pretty good near shore depth all around its shores so there are lots of deep water docks.
 
It pays to look into that before you buy. ...

Not everyone is as fortunate as you, sometimes where you need to live isn't where you would like to live or can afford to live. In my case I am living right where I wanted to be.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
112,944
Messages
1,422,715
Members
60,927
Latest member
Jaguar65
Back
Top