Boat Depreciation by Brand: What Holds Value (2026 Data)

You are looking at two boats the same week: a 2006 Sea Ray and a 2006 Bayliner, both around 22 feet, both clean, and the Sea Ray wants $6,000 more. The badge on the hull side is the thing every forum argues about and almost nobody measures. So we measured it — 6,186 active US private-party listings that carry a model year and an asking price, across 114 builders in all 50 states, and we pulled the depreciation curve for every brand with enough listings to say something honest.

The short answer

Across the whole market, a 20-to-24-year-old boat asks 46% of what a 5-to-9-year-old boat asks. That is the bar every brand has to clear.

The brands that clear it in our data: Tracker (57%), Boston Whaler (56%), Alumacraft (55%), Sea Ray (52%), Regal (51%), Sun Tracker (50%). The brands that fall well short: Skeeter (28%), Chaparral (32%), Malibu (33%), Yamaha jet boats (34%), Lund (38%).

But the retention percentage is the smaller half of the story, and reading it alone will burn you. The number that actually protects your money is the floor — what a brand still commands once the hull is 25 years old. Grady-White holds a $18,500 median at 25-plus years. Glastron holds $5,000. That gap is worth more to you than any percentage.

What this is built on, and what it is not

Every figure here comes from BoatVerdict’s own listing database, filtered to active private-party listings with an asking price between $800 and $2,000,000 and a stated model year between 1990 and 2026. Brand tables use the 33 builders with 60 or more such listings — 4,395 listings. No cell is published with fewer than 10 listings behind it, and the listing count sits next to every number.

Three honest limits:

• These are asking prices, not sold prices. Sellers ask high, and older-boat sellers ask especially high. Comparing a brand against itself cancels most of that bias, which is why retention is the headline number rather than raw dollars.
• Size mix differs by brand. Boston Whaler’s median listing in our set is 15 feet; Sea Ray’s is 24. Never read across brands on dollars alone.
• Older listings skew slightly larger. On the 780 listings that state a length, the market falls from $1,554 per foot at 5-to-9 years to $519 per foot at 20-to-24 — 33% retention per foot against 46% on raw price. The raw curve flatters old boats. Treat 46% as the generous read.

The market baseline: what any brand has to beat

Boat age	Median asking price	Listings	Index (5–9 yrs = 100)
0–4 yrs	$35,995	612	116
5–9 yrs	$31,000	808	100
10–14 yrs	$23,000	586	74
15–19 yrs	$16,950	680	55
20–24 yrs	$14,300	1,266	46
25–29 yrs	$10,500	1,209	34
30+ yrs	$7,500	1,025	24

We index to the 5-to-9-year band rather than to new, because near-new boats barely appear in the private-party market and the ones that do are unrepresentative. For the shape of the first five years — the part that costs an original owner the most money — see boat depreciation explained, and if you are still deciding whether to buy new at all, new vs used boat runs that trade-off.

The useful read: the decade from year 10 to year 20 removes about a third of a boat’s remaining asking price, and after year 25 the curve is mostly flat because most hulls have landed on a floor.

Value retention by brand

Each brand compared against itself: the median asking price of its 20-to-24-year-old boats as a share of its 5-to-9-year-old boats.

Brand	Median, 5–9 yrs	Median, 20–24 yrs	Retention	Listings (5–9 / 20–24)
Tracker	$20,100	$11,500	57%	84 / 29
Boston Whaler	$31,000	$17,500	56%	15 / 32
Alumacraft	$15,500	$8,500	55%	13 / 12
Sea Ray	$33,000	$16,999	52%	10 / 125
Regal	$52,000	$26,750	51%	11 / 24
Sun Tracker	$26,000	$13,000	50%	31 / 12
Ranger	$37,500	$18,000	48%	33 / 15
Hurricane	$27,250	$13,000	48%	22 / 13
Bayliner	$18,500	$8,500	46%	36 / 128
Whole market	$31,000	$14,300	46%	808 / 1,266
Lund	$34,500	$13,000	38%	26 / 29
Tahoe	$28,500	$10,000	35%	19 / 17
Yamaha	$29,250	$9,900	34%	88 / 43
Malibu	$90,000	$29,375	33%	17 / 14
Chaparral	$53,950	$17,500	32%	10 / 63
Skeeter	$55,500	$15,500	28%	15 / 10

Two cells to treat gently: Sea Ray and Chaparral each have exactly 10 listings in the 5-to-9-year band, our publishing minimum. Their 20-to-24 bands are deep (125 and 63), so the old end is solid and the young end is soft.

The pattern underneath the ranking is not “premium versus budget.” It is how far the brand had to fall. Malibu asks a $90,000 median at 5-to-9 years and $29,375 at 20-to-24 — a brutal percentage, but the boat is still worth nearly $30,000 two decades in, which is more than most brands manage at any age. Skeeter’s 28% is the same story: bass boats are priced around a current-generation engine and electronics package, and both age out fast. If you are shopping that segment, weigh boat engine hours: how many is too many more heavily than the badge.

The floor is the number that protects you

Retention tells you how fast the fall was. The floor tells you where you land — and it is what determines whether a repair bill is worth paying five years from now.

Brand	Median asking, 25+ yrs	Listings	Share of brand’s listings under $10,000
Grady-White	$18,500	50	9%
MasterCraft	$18,000	23	8%
Boston Whaler	$14,500	43	16%
Regal	$14,500	37	20%
Cobalt	$11,975	34	19%
Sea Ray	$10,500	289	31%
Chaparral	$8,700	64	24%
Bayliner	$7,600	259	48%
Four Winns	$7,500	81	46%
Lund	$7,500	41	31%
Maxum	$7,499	56	59%
Tracker	$5,700	26	26%
Yamaha	$5,600	52	36%
Larson	$5,500	65	52%
Glastron	$5,000	55	66%
Alumacraft	$5,000	25	63%

Run this against a real repair. A wet transom or rotten stringers is a $5,000 to $20,000 job on a fiberglass boat. On a 25-year-old Grady-White or Boston Whaler, that repair is arguable — the hull still carries value worth defending. On a 25-year-old Glastron or Maxum asking $5,000 to $7,500, the same repair is a total loss and the boat becomes a parts donor. That is the single most practical use of this table: the floor tells you how much bad news the boat can survive. Before you fall in love with a cheap old fiberglass hull, read boat stringers rot and boat transom rot signs, because on a low-floor brand those two findings end the deal.

The flat-curve trap

Fit a decay curve to individual asking prices by model year and the annual loss rates spread out like this: Four Winns 9.1%, Larson 8.9%, Chaparral 8.3%, Crownline 8.0%, Malibu 7.9%, Cobalt 7.5% — down through Boston Whaler 4.8%, Lund 4.5%, Tracker 4.3%, and finally Bayliner at 3.2% and Alumacraft at 2.1%.

Bayliner and Alumacraft look like the best value holders on the board. They are not. The fit quality gives it away: model year explains 59% of the price variation in Chaparral listings but only 11% in Bayliner listings and 7% in Alumacraft. Translated: on a Bayliner, the year on the hull barely predicts the price, because the brand hits its floor early and then everything from 1998 to 2012 asks roughly the same money. Forty-eight percent of Bayliner listings and 63% of Alumacraft listings sit under $10,000.

A flat curve at a low floor is not value retention. It is having nothing left to lose. This is also why a “great deal” screen based on price-versus-year fails on those brands — the year is not carrying information. Condition is. Weigh it accordingly, and if the price still looks odd, is this boat overpriced? walks the checks that do work.

Orphan brands and what happens to the badge

Part of what sets a floor is whether anyone still builds the boat. Three of the brands in our data are cautionary:

• Maxum — Brunswick discontinued the brand in August 2009. Today: a $7,499 median at 25-plus years, 59% of listings under $10,000, and a decay fit so flat (r² of 0.03) that model year tells you essentially nothing.
• Larson — went through the 2009 Genmar bankruptcy, was acquired by Polaris in January 2019, and Larson Boat Group ceased operations in 2020. Today: a $5,500 median at 25-plus years, with 52% of listings under $10,000.
• Four Winns, Glastron and Scarab Jet — on 11 June 2026 Groupe Beneteau’s supervisory board resolved to halt production at its Cadillac, Michigan plant during Q3 2026 and seek buyers for the three brands. That is fresh, and the brands may well continue under new owners, but it is the kind of event that shows up in asking prices over the following few seasons. Four Winns already sits at a $7,500 floor with 46% of listings under $10,000; Glastron is at $5,000 with 66% under $10,000.

By contrast, Sea Ray, Bayliner, Boston Whaler, Lund and Crestliner remain in production under Brunswick, and Boston Whaler’s floor shows it.

What actually drives the differences

Four things, in the order they move the number:

1. Cost of the fatal repair. Solid-glass and foam-filled hulls hold value because the failure that kills the boat is rarer and cheaper. Cored decks and wood stringers set a lower floor: one bad survey ends the hull.
2. Whether demand is national or regional. Boston Whaler, Grady-White, Sea Ray and MasterCraft sell to buyers in every state, so a thin local market does not force a price cut. Regional aluminum brands trade in a narrower pond.
3. Whether the boat is priced around its powerplant. Bass boats, tow boats and jet boats carry a large share of their value in a current-generation engine and electronics package. When that package ages out, the price follows — which is what Skeeter’s 28% and Yamaha’s 34% are really showing.
4. Whether anyone still builds it. Dealer network, parts and buyer confidence all compress once the brand is orphaned.

What to do with this before you make an offer

1. Find your brand’s floor in the table above and compare it to the asking price. If the seller is asking near the floor, condition is the only variable left and the badge is doing nothing for you.
2. If the boat is a low-floor brand over 20 years old, make the survey non-negotiable. A boat survey costs $18 to $30 per foot. On a $9,000 hull that is 5% to 8% of the price, and it is the only thing standing between you and a boat worth less than the repair.
3. Do not pay a premium price for the badge alone. Grady-White and Boston Whaler earn their floors through construction and national demand. A tired one is still a tired boat and will not hold the number in the table.
4. On steep-curve brands, buy late and hold. Chaparral, Four Winns, Crownline and Larson have already given up most of what they are going to give up by year 20. Someone else absorbed the 8% to 9% a year. Buy there and your own loss over the next five years is small.
5. Anchor your offer on the age band, not on the seller’s number. Our medians are asking prices. Use the band medians here as the ceiling of reasonable, then work down from condition findings — how much to offer on a used boat has the mechanics.

Got a specific listing in mind? Paste it and get an instant verdict — you will get a Buy Score, the red flags, and where the asking price sits against comparable boats before you call the seller.