A free budget tool we made to help you find the houseboat you can afford.
Like all great things in life worth having, figuring out which houseboat you and your family can afford takes time. We view buying and owning costs as different, yet critical to think through before buying a houseboat. We’ve been researching and planning against our houseboat budget for a long time, and isn’t a decision we made last minute.
And buying a houseboat is the easy part. It’s like the saying goes: “the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it.” We think that’s mostly because the boat buyer doesn’t have an accurate view of how much it costs to buy and own a boat.
So, we want to share with you the actual tools we used to estimate the potential houseboat buying and ownership costs to see if we could afford houseboat life and boating on a budget. Hopefully this will give you a more accurate view of what it takes to own a houseboat, and will give you tools to make it happen, too. Stick with us here, it'll be worth it.
Set Your Boat Buying & Owning Budget
When we began our houseboat buying journey, the first thing we did was decide on how much money we thought we could realistically put on the table to buy the boat. We then decided on a monthly budget that we could afford to cover all potential houseboat ownership expenses. When setting that monthly houseboat ownership budget, we wanted to make sure we could still cover the monthly boat costs without dipping into savings, should one of us not have a job for a period of time.
We also wanted to make sure we had six to nine months of houseboat ownership expenses in savings, as well as six to nine months of additional savings to cover our normal living expenses. Once we figured out the amount we could bring to the table to buy the houseboat and what our monthly boat ownership budget would be, we then worked backwards to see what types of houseboats we could afford based on the projected costs of buying and owning versus our budget.
Houseboat Budget Tool
We’ve built a houseboat budget tool to help visualize different scenarios for houseboat buying and ownership costs. You can access this houseboat budget tool for free by clicking on the below Google Sheets link, creating your own copy, and using it for your own houseboat cost calculations.
There are two tabs in this free houseboat budget tool that we’re going to walk through. This blog post will cover the first Cost to Buy Houseboat tab, and our next blog post will go through the Cost to Own Houseboat tab. Though, feel free to explore both on your own.
Buying Costs Overview
Let’s just focus on the Cost to Buy Houseboat tab right now. Our one-time cost to “buy” our houseboat was the downpayment plus the marine survey, DNR registration, coast guard registration, miscellaneous bank fees, annual BoatUS membership, the first month’s insurance payment, and four months slip payment, as well as cash reserves in savings to cover future monthly houseboat expenses in case of emergency. So what this means is, you need to think through three major buckets when calculating the cost to buy. Houseboat price and loan options, marina slip prices, and one-time costs.
Example Scenario
Boat Price & Loan Options
We’re now going to walk through a scenario to help bring this to life.
1. Here is a houseboat for sale on a reputable houseboat broker website. It’s priced at $189,000, and let’s say for the sake of example, you’re able to negotiate a bit and the final agreed upon price is $180,000. We’ll type that price in cell C6.
2. For anyone looking to get into houseboating, the finance lender will likely require at least 20% down on the price of the boat.
I would recommend at least 25% down, more if you can, for the down payment. The reason is, new boats can depreciate fast and you don’t want to get underwater on the loan. Though, houseboats seem to hold their value well due to scarcity of both new and used inventory.
3. Look at current interest rates for houseboat lending. You can look at recreation lending websites, like OceanPoint Marine Lending and Recreation Lending, and they usually have ballpark rates on their sites for boat loans that you can use as estimations.
4. Select how long you’d like to finance your houseboat. You’ll likely get a boat loan between 5-20 years. A big factor that goes into how long you can finance a houseboat for is the age of the boat. Some lenders might not want to finance an older, 40-year-old houseboat for 20 years, as an example.
Marina Slip Costs
Next, you’ll need to do your homework on what marina you’ll want to keep your houseboat at, and what the prices are for covered vs. uncovered slips. Not all houseboat sellers are also giving up their slip, so you’ll want to make sure you consider this possibility. OR you may want to move marinas instead.
When doing our research, we visited several marinas and asked about slips prices before deciding where to keep our houseboat. We also factored in how far away each is from our house, as well as what amenities were offered at the marina. The prices we have here in the houseboat budget tool are estimations for uncovered slips, which are more plentiful in our area, from our research for different marinas here in Georgia. Prices will vary from lake to lake, marina to marina, depending on availability and other factors.
You can use these numbers as estimations. Though, it’s always best to inquire at the actual marinas you’re considering so you’ll have an accurate view of costs. In our experience, marinas are very open with their prices, if you ask them.
One-Time Costs
Now, on to one-time costs, like the marine survey. You will absolutely need to have a marine survey done to be able get a loan and insurance. This gives both you, the lender, and the insurance company peace of mind that there isn’t something seriously wrong with the houseboat before you buy it, the lender finances it, and the insurance company insures it. Most marine surveyors charge by the foot. So enter your houseboat length in cell G19 and the price your surveyor is charging by foot in cell G20, and your total for the marine survey will populate in cell G21. The price our surveyor charged us per foot was $12.
You’ll also need to do a one-time registration of your houseboat under your name with both the DNR and Coast Guard. You can see the costs to us in cell G7, but those may vary in your area. We also suggest getting an annual membership with BoatUS so you can call them when you’re in a bind and need to be towed. The annual rate per year is a little bit more than advertised on their website, as you can see, for houseboats
There may also be some miscellaneous bank fees at closing. We decided to pay them up front instead of rolling them into the total loan amount. Just know you have either option. You’ll also want your first month of insurance ready to go as well.
Final Costs to Buy
Once you have the three major cost areas filled out in the budget tool, you can calculate your final costs to buy your potential houseboat. So, add the houseboat down payment, three month slip deposit, first month slip payment, and one-time costs together and you’ll get the total in green in cell D23.
Though, we also recommend having at least six to nine months of monthly houseboat ownership expenses already saved up and ready to go in case of emergencies. Which means your total cost to buy the houseboat boat would also include either the six or nine months boat ownership expenses in orange, whichever you are more comfortable with according to your budget, for the grand total in purple in cell D29.
What’s Next On Our Houseboat Stories Blog
We’ll go deeper into how to calculate your potential monthly houseboat ownership costs in our next blog, so come back soon and we will walk you through the second tab in this houseboat budget tool. If you would like to hear me walk through this houseboat budget tool, you can find our full video on our Deep Houseboat Life YouTube channel as well. Give us a LIKE and SUBSCRIBE on our channel if this tool has been helpful, and leave us a comment below with any additional questions about the houseboat buying process.
Until next time...peace, love, and houseboats.
Deep Houseboat Life
