Doller Reports Banner Year In Used Performance-Boat Sales

Based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Doller Offshore Marine is reporting its strongest year of used performance-boat sales in the past five years. According to company principal Mindi Doller, the company sold approximately $5 million in pre-owned go-fast boats including models from Cigarette Racing Team, Mystic, Nor-Tech, Outerlimits, Fountain, Donzi and Sunsation. (Doller is a Sunsation dealer and also has had an excellent year in new Sunsation models.) Used boat model years have ranged from 1999 to 2014. Later model-year offerings, Doller noted, are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

“If I had 30 V-bottom performance boats in the 46- to 50-foot range from the 2010 to 2013 I could sell all 30 of them,” she said. “But they didn’t build many of those during that time period, so there are very few late-model, large-horsepower big V-bottoms out there. My sales have ranged from $45,000 to $600,000 and everything in between.”

Mindi Doller: “I think it’s all very encouraging for the performance-boat world—performance boats are selling.”

During the past five years, her full-service dealership moved approximately $1 to $2 million in pre-owned go-boat product per year, according to Doller. Like other dealers, Doller points out that late-model, high–quality used performance boats are becoming scarce, and that the 2014 and 2015 models starting to come on the market are not available at particularly low “bargain” prices.

“People think performance boats aren’t selling and that they should be able to ‘steal’ a used one, and that’s just not the case,” she explained. “Financing is getting easier and insurance is getting easier—it’s either that or the people I surround myself with are able to get deals done because I have not had any trouble getting financing or insurance for the boats we sell.

“I am pretty particular in the listings I will take,” she added. “The boat has to have been taken care of and prepared for sale properly. I need to be confident that I know everything about the boat I’m selling. Maybe that’s why I sell more. A lot of that is response time, too. I hear from people that they called on a certain boat 12 times and sent 10 emails and got no response. I answer my cell phone 24/7. I think it’s all very encouraging for the performance-boat world—performance boats are selling. The days of going out and buying a nice, used performance boat on the cheap are gone.”