The 172-day number changed how I'm watching listings

The October 2025 US sailboat market report has median days-on-market at 172, up 15% year over year. Median seller discount is now 7.2%, expanding from a spring low near 5%. And roughly 30% of listed boats, per the same brokerage aggregates, won't sell at all this cycle.

I've been tracking bluewater cats specifically — a narrower slice — and the numbers in my own spreadsheet are more skewed than those aggregate averages. The 45-to-52-foot cruising catamarans on my shortlist (Outremer 51, Catana OC 50, HH 44, Fountaine Pajot Aura 51, Balance 482) are sitting longer than the market suggests, but the good ones close near ask. The tired ones — the ex-charter Lagoons and Leopards with three thousand hours on the port engine, 2018 gel batteries, and original sails — are what's dragging the mean.

I re-ran my own numbers last night. Of the 41 bluewater cats between 45 and 55 feet that changed hands on Yachtworld's sold-comps between January and June 2026, the median discount was 8.4%. But when I split them by "owner-cruised, refit within three years" versus "ex-charter, no refit," the two discount medians were 3.1% and 14.9%. That is the market. The good boats aren't discounted much. The cosmetically-tired boats are discounted a lot — and often for reasons you can only see with a haulout and a rig survey.

Two things I'm doing differently as a result.

First, I've stopped treating listing age as a signal by itself. A 200-day listing on a well-equipped Outremer 45 is not a boat that has failed to sell. It's a boat priced correctly for a small pool of buyers who can actually write the check, and it's waiting for one of them. A 40-day sale on a Lagoon 450 doesn't tell me the boat is great; it tells me the price finally dropped through someone's floor.

Second, I've reset what a real offer looks like. On a well-refit boat I'd actually want to own, my number is ask minus 4 to 6 percent — pending a haulout and standing-rigging inspection. On an ex-charter, my number is ask minus 20 or I don't send it. The 7.2% median headline is the wrong benchmark for either half of that split.

The last piece is the 30% that won't sell. Of the bluewater cats I first tagged on Yachtworld back in January and are still listed today, the median asking-price change is 4.1%. That is not a market clearing; that is sellers holding out. If I'm patient through the fall, the boats that have already sat six months and taken one cut are going to take a second, larger cut in November. Carrying costs on a 50-foot cat in a Caribbean marina run around $3,200 a month plus insurance, and sellers do the math too.

The 172-day number isn't a warning sign. It's a permission slip.