TF often has threads on the boat market trends and they're interesting to read, but the world is so turbulent now -- on multiple levels at the same time -- it's getting to the point where I don't even try to guess. And even very experienced, wise opinions offered on here start to feel like total guesses to me. Our marina -- about as far from salt water as you can get in North America -- decided to crank up prices drastically this season, to the point where it's becoming a close call whether we stay there. We went to a big RV/boat/outdoor show last weekend. Packed. Delivery dates are still 6-12 months out, and good luck on parts and service. They had Class A motorhomes stacked up in a line in the convention hall, all half a million dollars and above. The boats were burst-out-laughing expensive (finance this boat or RV over 987 months!). I do know our marina and our boat have gotten so expensive so fast that even though we're making significantly more money now than when we bought our first big(ger) boat in 2011, if we didn't own our current boat outright now, I don't think we'd dive into this again. There are two boats for sale on Boat Trader right now, same make and model as ours. Asking price (for what that's worth) is double and triple, respectively, what we paid for ours about five years ago. Sometimes I feel like a frog in a pot of heating water with the cost escalations. If we were diving in now, we would almost certainly do something else that's not such a money drain. I know there's a ton of money sloshing around, from fake federal money to plain old rich people (whatever that means to each of us), but when you see global chaos and instability and market fluctuations like this, even though we can float the cost of an expensive recreational activity without pain, it makes me want to hunker down for a while.
And P.S. I'm glad I'm not Oceanco right now.