owning a boat has long been known to be
a pretty terrible investment most boat
owners will tell you that boat stands
for breakout another thousand they
require a lot of maintenance which can
get expensive and time consuming but
what if you put your boat to work for
you in this day and age you can rent out
just about anything online including
boats websites like get my boat and boat
setter allow owners to rent their boats
out by the hour it's kind of like the
airbnb for boats i wonder though how
much can you really make doing this does
it just offset the costs or can you make
a real profit with this so today we're
going to talk to someone who's actually
already renting out multiple boats on
boat setters so i talked to lindsay a
boat setter rental owner here in seattle
to find out
but before we really get into it i
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year and let's get into the video
this is lake union in seattle washington
this lake feeds into a bigger lake lake
washington and on a nice day in seattle
you'll find hundreds of boats out here
last summer lindsey and her husband put
their boat for rent on boatsider.com we
made 26 000
in 63 days so the first season renting
out their boat they made 26 000
that's amazing but there's more to the
story there are costs involved with this
so let's break down the revenue and
expenses to see the total profit that
they had last summer the boat itself was
38 plus tax
38 000 is a significant investment but
it's a brand new boat so it's under a
warranty so should it have any issues in
the first few years they won't have to
pay for that and they didn't pay for the
entire boat up front they actually
financed it the boats have 15-year loans
on them which is pretty normal six
percent interest but there's more costs
than just the boat itself you have to
pay for somewhere to store your boat
insurance the boat's registration and
regular maintenance
what does the monthly cost look like for
the vr5 in terms of the monthly loan
cost insurance all of that yeah so for
the vr5 our loan is 262 dollars a month
slip space was
400 a month the drive storage which we
still had to pay during the summer
because we have to store the trailer
was 100 a month during the summer and
then that kicks up to 160 during the
winter for the covered dry storage for
the bow insurance was 50 a month and
because the boat's brand new they didn't
have any crazy maintenance but there are
things you have to do to even a new boat
every single year
at the end of the season we have it
winterized and that costs us about 300
to 500
and so the total after all of these
expenses so that boat cost us about 46
000 out the door so that was including
insurance registration the trailer the
trailers registration
so those are all of the costs but let's
talk a little bit more about how much it
made all right for lindsay's boat and
really most boats on boat setter there
is a minimum three hour booking and for
that they're able to charge 449
and then it jumps up for five hours 537
all the way up to 8 hours 974
i think the big question everyone is
wondering is ok does it really even get
booked that much though and in this case
yes with the vr5 you can see she's
already had 147 bookings and if all of
these bookings were even just at the
lowest three hour rate that would still
be 66 000 that this boat has made so
this boat has actually started to make a
profit on top of all of the costs but i
don't think that this is the case
everywhere i've researched the website
quite a bit and there are a lot of boats
that don't actually have that many
bookings
to be real with you lindsay's account is
the only one i've seen that is this
booked out
almost every boat setter account has
like less than 10 bookings i don't know
if this is because these services are
kind of new or if because there just
isn't that much demand in a lot of
places so in a lot of cases it would be
risky to buy a boat and bank off of the
fact that you're going to get
50 bookings in a summer because
it might not happen but this is true of
any business like this airbnb arturo
this could also totally happen this is
just the risk that you take when doing
this kind of business but i do think
that it's important to note another
factor that comes into play is this is
somewhat time consuming so it's true
that you can't remotely unlock a boat
you really need to have somebody there
to make sure that people sign safety
waivers to help them dock the boat when
they get back later and to just give
them some general instructions there's
just more to renting a boat than renting
a house or a car do you find that doing
boat setter is pretty time consuming uh
yeah 100 it is pretty time consuming we
find that we're down here during the
weekdays after work for bookings we're
down here a lot during the weekend even
though we do have employees helping us
out it's just it's unfortunately not
like airbnb or turo where you can do the
contactless check-in there are
liability waivers that need to be signed
there's a check-in on the boat all the
boats are slightly different so
it's not like
going into a house where you'll find the
kitchen and the kitchen is how you
expect it to operate it's um you know
here is where the gas cap is for this
boat here are where the life jackets are
for this boat it's uh
it there there is a lot more hands-on
um
time required especially when it comes
to docking the boat at the end of a
rental i noticed that you really need
someone there to help someone because
people that are renting a boat aren't
going to be as seasoned at doing this so
you really have to have someone there
you know at the start and at the end of
the booking yes you can always hire it
out but it's less appealing to me
because you can't fully automate it with
technology you still need to hire an
actual person to be there since last
year went really well they decided to
expand this year to nine boats so we
have nine boats
across two different locations so over
here is their little slip marina area
they're able to store six boats here and
it's six thousand dollars per month or
sixty thousand for the entire year and
we have to rent it for the whole year
yeah but this is a prime spot overall do
you feel like it's worth it doing this
oh yeah 100
in terms of investment for us
the
and for us specifically because we had
so much
prior experience with boating the
barrier to entry was super low yeah um
we started with one boat we had enormous
success so we were like great let's
scale up
um definitely
been more of an investment in terms of
our like sweat equity this this summer
yeah it's as of last week when we broke
even it's uh it's been it will be worth
it yeah
with the break even number is that
coming from paying the loans on the
boats not the total amount correct okay
so it's like the loan for the year loan
for the year the boats have 15-year
loans on them paying off all of our
costs for this year including the marina
slip costs the insurance costs uh labor
costs drive storage costs
the whole kit and caboodle um
we paid that off last week so everything
else is going into our pocket i will
admit i don't think that we'll hit our
forecasted number
but yeah i mean like anything anything
over that
anything over break even is
it's like good it's great yeah because
then you're also getting equity in the
boats so say one day you want to sell
this
boat rental business you have all these
assets absolutely and we're building up
the brand in terms of tax like the
depreciation schedules on the boat and
everything like that and one last thing
i want to mention is that lindsay and
her husband used to work in europe on
really nice boats so they're familiar
with how boats work some of the
maintenance they're able to do
themselves however lindsay told me that
it is possible if you've never owned a
boat before to be able to do this
someone who doesn't know a lot about
boats wanted to do this say i wanted to
do this like marina del rey
what advice would you have for me get a
really
good
boat manager i know in la there's a huge
maritime community of you know decans or
stewardesses or
captains who who are keen to get
involved
if you can find like your guy or girl
who is gonna help you out with that if
you know nothing then you're
you know then you're laughing then yeah
it seems like there are a lot of little
things with boats like i've heard that
you need to paint them every year if
they're sitting in salt water maybe also
fresh water anti-filing yep even what
you just said about making sure
propellers out of the water
when you're approached with all of this
information and just like i didn't even
think of that prop thing like that feels
like a huge barrier barrier to entry for
me i would say it's not the case like
there's not that much stuff that you
need to learn about right it just feels
like a lot up front yeah so i think this
is a super cool business idea i mean the
fact that you can pay off the boat
really in just two years and then be
making a profit on top of that are you
kidding
i want a boat like i'm out here googling
boats for sale you guys however i do
wonder if too many people are doing this
is there still going to be the demand
and lindsay has actually seen with them
expanding to more boats that they've
even kind of over saturated the market
just by themselves it's with our boats
we've definitely found that now that we
have quite a lot of
similar sized boats we have cannibalized
the market for the vr5 that we have that
you guys are going to be taking out i've
over saturated our own market yeah
because we charge a little bit more for
the vr5 whereas people are like i want
to take a boat out i just want to go out
for a few hours beautiful day
i'm gonna pick this one it's brand new
perfect let's let's oh it's uh you know
50 bucks an hour cheaper than this one
so i'm gonna book this one so which is
fine for us because the money is still
going into our pocket but we are seeing
less
um
less pick up on the vr5 this summer than
we were last so right
so overall i think this is a very cool
business idea especially if you already
have a boat
you might as well rent it out right you
could probably fully pay for the boat in
a couple years depending on how much
demand there is in your area however it
may not be the best investment ever
because boats are depreciating assets
depreciating liabilities more like
because they're always breaking so you
might be better off putting your money
in stocks or real estate or something
like that but if you love boats and you
want one and you want to be able to use
it yourself sometimes and have it pay
for itself too
i mean
i'm over here looking at boats for sale
i'm not even kidding you guys i think
this would be so cool to do
so lindsay actually is offering 10 off
her boat which is so nice if any of you
guys want to book it so i'll have a code
on the screen if you want to do that so
if you guys are thinking of doing this
and making an account on beltsetter you
can use my link and you'll get a hundred
dollars the first time you rent your
boat out automatically so i'll have that
link down below if you want to get that
it's like an affiliate link so we both
get a little bit um but i put a lot of
effort into making this video so if you
want to support my channel and see more
videos like that that would be super
cool but
you don't have to so that is going to be
it for this video i hope that you guys
enjoyed it as much as i enjoyed making
it and i will see you in my next video
bye
