Bruce speculated: > Don't despair - the market's about to collapse, and we'll see prices > tumbling. We've already noted marinas that are struggling to fill > their spaces, and that's before the shrinkage of the boat building > market.
I'm not convinced that the market will work like that and here is my reasoning: There is a population of boats already on the water and unless they are destroyed, taken to another country or take up mass civil disobedience by mooring all along the cut, that proportion that is the existing marina population will not shrink significantly. In times like these there will be a slow down in the rate of increase of new-builds. This will be a slow down only as some of the boat builders will survive through the bad times. Therefore the boat population is likely to increase, slower than before but still an increase. If the build of new marina places has, or will, exceed the rate of increase of the boat population then you have an over-supply and prices should fall. If the rate of new marina places doesn't exceed the rate of boat population growth then demand should still be greater than supply and prices should hold their own or increase. OK, I don't know what the possible over-supply of existing marina places is like at the moment, if it exists (and it possibly does because of the recent explosion of new marina developments), but I doubt that future high investment projects like marinas will be built in these financially strained times. Even house-builders are moth- balling partially completed projects due to lack of demand so I doubt marina developers will continue to develop in the next couple of years and possibly longer. So, even in hard times, the boat population won't fall or even stop growing. It will always continue to grow but at a slower rate. That rate compared to the availability of marina places should be the controlling factor in the pricing that the market will bear surely?. Roger
