How Yachts & Bids works
Yachts & Bids is a 7-day boat auction for the BC coast — Vancouver, Victoria, the Sunshine Coast, Nanaimo, and the Gulf Islands. A broker listing can sit for months while you keep paying moorage. An auction sets a deadline, puts every interested buyer in the same room, and ends when the bidding actually stops.
Here's the whole thing, start to finish: how you buy, how you sell, and how the money moves safely once the hammer drops.
One difference worth saying out loud up front: a boat needs a survey before money changes hands, so we never hold the purchase price and the close isn't instant. It's built to be fast and safe — not one-click. The rest of this page shows exactly why that's a feature, not a delay.
Buying a boat
1. Register and add a refundable deposit
Browsing and watching auctions is free. To place a bid, you register and we hold a refundable $1,000 deposit (charged, then refunded). It does one job: it keeps the bidding to real buyers, so the seller — and you — aren't bidding against tire-kickers. Lose the auction, get it back.
2. Do your due diligence
Before you bid, read the listing the way you'd walk the dock:
- Read the full listing, the photos, and the Known Flaws section. Every Yachts & Bids listing has one — written by hand with the seller, not buried.
- Ask the seller questions in the open comments. Other bidders see the answers too.
- Arrange a marine survey or sea-trial if you want eyes on it before you commit. Our marine survey guide walks through what a surveyor checks.
3. Bid — and know your bid is binding
When you place a bid, you mean it. Bids are binding: if you win, you've agreed to buy. That's what makes the number on the screen trustworthy for everyone watching.
4. The auction runs 7 days, with an anti-snipe soft-close
Every auction is live for a week. The current high bid ticks up in the open. If a bid lands in the final minutes, the clock extends — so nobody steals the boat with a last-second snipe, and the auction ends when the bidding actually stops.
5. Win the boat
When the clock runs out, the high bidder wins.
- No-reserve auctions sell to the highest bidder, period — no secret floor.
- Reserve auctions sell once bidding clears the seller's minimum. If you want the difference in plain English, read reserve vs no-reserve.
Winning doesn't move any money yet. That happens in Finalizing the sale, below — after the boat checks out.
Selling a boat
1. Submit your boat — it's free
Listing is free and you keep 100% of the hammer price. There's no listing fee and no seller commission. To start, you send a few details: make, year, engine hours, and condition, with a couple of photos. Submit your boat here.
A real person — the founder — reviews every boat by hand and replies within 2 business days. No auto-reject, no bot.
2. Build the listing together
If your boat's a fit, we write the listing with you so it reads honestly and sells:
- Photos: you shoot your own using our boat photo guide — the shots buyers actually scroll for (hull, bilge, engine, electronics, the flaws).
- History: service records and ownership history go in. Buyers pay more for a boat with a paper trail.
- Known Flaws: we put the honest flaws up front. It sounds backwards, but disclosed flaws build trust and stop the deal from falling apart at survey.
Not sure what it's worth first? Get a free what's-my-boat-worth estimate before you commit.
3. Seven days of bidding
Your auction goes live for a week. Bidders compete in the open, the price climbs, and the soft-close keeps it honest to the last minute.
You're never locked in. No exclusivity required — you can keep your boat listed elsewhere and walk away anytime. (That's a deliberate difference from the car auctions; we'd rather earn the listing than trap it.)
4. Participate
Answer questions in the comments quickly and straight. A seller who shows up — who knows the boat and says so — gets more bids and a higher close. This is the cheapest work you'll do all week and it moves the number the most.
Finalizing the sale
This is the part built for a five- or six-figure transfer between two strangers — where wire fraud and "is the boat actually as described" are the real risks. Yachts & Bids never holds the purchase price — $0 of it touches us. Here's the order things happen.
1. The winner commits
The winning bidder confirms the purchase. Their bid was binding; this is where it becomes a deal.
2. The survey + sea-trial window confirms the boat — before any money moves
There's a structured marine survey and sea-trial window after the win. The buyer (or their surveyor) gets the boat on the water and under inspection. This is the safety valve a car auction can't offer:
If the survey turns up a material defect that wasn't disclosed, the buyer can walk — and the deposit is refunded.
Disclosed flaws don't count; that's why the Known Flaws section matters for both sides.
3. The money moves buyer → seller through a licensed marine escrow & title partner
Once the boat checks out, the purchase price moves through a licensed marine escrow & title partner — not through us. This is the anti-wire-fraud step: there's no "wire the money to this stranger" moment, because a regulated trust account sits in the middle.
The escrow partner:
- Runs the PPSA lien search so you don't buy someone else's loan along with the boat.
- Handles the title and paperwork — the Pleasure Craft Licence (PCL) transfer for pleasure craft, or the Transport Canada / Canadian Register of Vessels transfer where it applies.
- Releases the funds to the seller only once title is clear.
BC paperwork is genuinely simpler than the US: a pleasure craft uses a PCL (about $24 for five years as of 2025 — sign the back, buyer files within 90 days). The Canadian Register of Vessels (about $250) is only for commercial, mortgaged, or foreign-travel boats. On a private BC sale, budget for about 12% PST on the purchase price. Full detail in selling a boat in BC.
4. You pay only the capped buyer fee
The seller pays nothing. The buyer pays a premium of 5% of the winning bid — minimum $250, maximum $10,000 CAD. The cap is the point: even on a $500,000 boat the fee tops out at $10,000, a fraction of a 10% broker commission.
The honest tradeoff
A car auction can feel instant because a car is a car. A boat needs to be surveyed and sea-trialled before tens of thousands of dollars change hands — so we built the close around that instead of pretending it away. The survey window plus a licensed escrow partner is why a Yachts & Bids sale is fast and safe, not one-click. That's the trade we'd want as a buyer, and the one we'd want as a seller.
Ready to start? Submit your boat or check what it's worth.