Two identical Jeanneau 42s show up in your search. One is listed by a broker in La Rochelle at 145 000 €. The other is a private ad, same year, same engine hours, 132 000 €. On paper the private boat wins. In practice, the answer depends on what you're paying the broker for, what you're willing to do yourself, and how much risk you're comfortable carrying between the sea trial and the notarised bill of sale. The two routes are not just a price gap. They change the paperwork, the recourse you have if things go wrong, and how much of the survey work lands on your desk.

What a broker actually does (and doesn't do)

A yacht broker is a commercial intermediary. In France they typically work under a mandate signed with the seller (mandat de vente), which sets their commission (usually 7 to 10 % of the sale price, sometimes higher on boats under 50 000 €) and their obligations. That mandate matters more than most buyers realise, because it defines who the broker legally represents. In almost every case, that's the seller. Not you.

What a serious broker does bring to the table:

  • A pre-screened listing. The obvious title problems, unpaid francisation fees, or an ongoing dispute over co-ownership are usually caught before the ad goes live.
  • A written inventory of what's included: sails, tender, electronics, ground tackle. This alone prevents a lot of last-minute arguments on the pontoon.
  • A structured process: offer, deposit held in escrow (séquestre), conditional clauses (survey, sea trial, financing), and a proper acte de vente.
  • Handling of the acte de francisation transfer, or the new titre de navigation under the recent reform, and the customs declaration where needed.

What a broker does not do: act as your surveyor, guarantee the mechanical condition of the boat, or absorb liability for hidden defects. A good broker will strongly recommend a survey and a sea trial. A weak one will discourage them because it slows the deal. That single behaviour tells you almost everything about who you're dealing with.

The private sale: freedom and friction

Buying from a private seller is the older, cheaper, and more work-intensive route. You save the commission, you talk directly to the person who has actually been sailing the boat, and you often get more honest answers about what breaks in a chop and what the autopilot really draws at 6 knots. That direct line is genuinely valuable. Nobody knows a boat like the owner who has been cursing it for eight years.

The friction is that you become your own project manager. You draft or vet the compromis de vente. You verify that the seller is actually the owner (and the sole owner: a boat bought during a marriage under communauté de biens needs both spouses to sign). You check that there is no gage or lien on the hull, no unpaid port fees, no outstanding lease with a bank. You organise the survey, the sea trial, the transport if the boat is on the hard, and the paperwork with the Direction des affaires maritimes.

None of this is impossible. Plenty of owners do it every year. But it changes the timeline. A brokered sale can close in three to six weeks. A private sale often takes longer because you're the one chasing every document. If you go this route, our guide on where you can buy a used boat safely covers the platforms and precautions worth knowing before you send a single euro.

The single biggest practical difference is how money moves and what protects it.

Through a broker, funds typically go into a compte séquestre (escrow account) until the conditions of the sale are cleared. The deposit (often 10 %) is held, not spent. If the survey uncovers a serious defect that was concealed, and your compromis includes the standard condition suspensive, you get your deposit back. The broker's professional insurance (garantie financière, mandatory for regulated brokers) is what makes that mechanism trustworthy.

In a private sale, there is no escrow by default. You wire money directly to the seller. If they cash the deposit and then pull out, or if the boat has an undisclosed problem, your recourse is civil litigation on the grounds of vice caché under article 1641 of the Code civil. That's a real legal tool, but it takes time, a lawyer, and often an expert report. It's not a good substitute for not paying in the first place.

You can bring escrow into a private sale by using a notary or a lawyer to hold the funds. It costs a few hundred euros. On a 100 000 € purchase, it's cheap insurance. Skipping it is one of the classic mistakes to avoid when buying a boat, and it's the one that costs the most when it goes wrong.

Price: is the broker margin actually real?

Buyers often assume the broker's commission is a pure premium added on top of a fair price. Sometimes it is. Often it isn't. Two things push private-sale prices closer to brokered prices than the raw numbers suggest.

First, private sellers frequently anchor to brokered listings when setting their asking price. They browse the same aggregator sites you do, see similar boats at 145 000 €, and list at 138 000 €, feeling generous. The commission never actually leaves the market price.

Second, brokered boats have usually been through a light triage. The engine bay has been cleaned, the deck gear has been checked, the paperwork is in order. A private boat at a lower price may need 3 000 € of work you didn't see coming, plus a haulout you weren't expecting. That's not a criticism of private sellers. It's just that the true purchase cost is the boat plus everything you need to do in the first six months, and that gap is easier to underestimate than the commission itself. Our breakdown of the hidden costs of owning a boat is worth reading before you finalise your budget on either route.

The honest way to compare is: brokered price versus (private price + escrow fees + your own paperwork time + an honest reserve for whatever the survey turns up). Sometimes the private boat still wins by 8 to 12 %. Sometimes it wins by 1 %, which is not worth the extra work. Do the arithmetic before you fall in love with the ad.

When each route makes sense

Some situations tilt clearly one way.

Go through a broker when :

  • You're buying from abroad and can't visit the boat three times before signing.
  • The boat is over 12 metres and the paperwork gets heavier (VAT status, flag, previous commercial use).
  • You're financing through a bank that wants a clean chain of documents.
  • The seller is an estate, a company in liquidation, or a divorce case. You want a professional between you and that mess.
  • You don't have the time or the appetite to chase administrative documents for two months.

Buy privately when :

  • You know the boat, or a close sister-ship, well enough to spot what matters in a survey.
  • The seller is local, the paperwork is simple, and the boat has a clean single-owner history.
  • The savings after fees, notary or lawyer escrow, and expected repairs are meaningful (typically 8 % or more on the total cost of the first year).
  • You have time to walk away. The moment you're emotionally committed, the private route gets dangerous.

What doesn't change either way

Whether a broker is involved or not, some steps are identical and non-negotiable. A professional survey by a qualified expert maritime, ideally one you chose yourself and not one recommended by the seller. A sea trial with the engine at cruising RPM for at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour, so the cooling system has time to reveal itself. A verification of the boat's administrative history: the history check before buying is the same work regardless of who's selling. And the formal registration steps, which don't care whether a broker was involved, are laid out in our overview of the procedures to buy a boat in France.

What also doesn't change: the moment the boat is yours, its data is yours. Engine hours, running temperatures, fuel curves, route history. On a used boat, those are the numbers that tell you whether the previous owner's story matches reality. On a new boat, they're the baseline you'll compare against for the next fifteen years. The Oria Box was built to capture that data from the NMEA 2000 or 0183 network the moment you take delivery, so the first hour under your ownership is also the first hour of your own maintenance log. Whether you paid a broker or shook hands on a pontoon, the boat you just bought starts writing its next chapter the second you turn the key. Are you going to be the one reading it?