Looking at new boats

[FuzzyGrub]

Doesn't NJ have a "discounted" sales tax rate for registering/titling a boat? My son indicated that, but don't remember what it was. Something like 4% vs 7-8%?

Here in NY we only have to re-register ever three years, to NJ every year. At least both are online now and easy to do.

When we sold my son's 1448 Tracker, the trailer didn't have registration, title, or COO. He did go thru and get a Maine plate for the trailer, but it was not transferable. The buyer was able to navigate the NY DMV and get it documented. We had to fill out a form and send it in for him. I think it took a month or two to get it cleared up.

 

[airshot]

Perhaps you should consider moving to another state.....seems NJ is a ripoff for boating and fishing people. I choose to live in Ohio near Lake Erie, very friendly toward boaters and fisherman. Good luck.

 

[outboard]

Doesn't NJ have a "discounted" sales tax rate for registering/titling a boat? My son indicated that, but don't remember what it was. Something like 4% vs 7-8%?

Here in NY we only have to re-register ever three years, to NJ every year. At least both are online now and easy to do.

When we sold my son's 1448 Tracker, the trailer didn't have registration, title, or COO. He did go thru and get a Maine plate for the trailer, but it was not transferable. The buyer was able to navigate the NY DMV and get it documented. We had to fill out a form and send it in for him. I think it took a month or two to get it cleared up.

The only discounts I'm aware of are for seniors over 65, disabled and those on assistance of some form but it doesn't apply to boats.
Home made trailers are easy, they can't force you to produce any receipts but to get one registered you have to be the 'builder' on record. You can never have bought a homemade trailer because then they tell you the person who built it has to register it then sign it over to you and that negates the whole reason for doing it.
My home made trailer registration says 'HMD Trailer" "Color: Metal". Furthermore I've never been asked for a trailer registration when pulled over. At best they ask if its your trailer or not. If its not registered they usually just tell to get it registered as long as its got a tag on it.
I drove all the way from NJ to MO and back once and never realized my trailer tag was laying on the back seat under a bag. 1,700 miles round trip and not once did I get pulled over. (A buddy borrowed it a week later and the tag was still in my truck and he got pulled over three times and told he best get a tag on that trailer.

If you miss a year they will try to collect the back years but they can't legally force you to pay up for a trailer not being used. Covid is what screwed it all up because they revamped how the DMV works after that. Before, every DMV office was first come first serve and they did everything. Now every office has a specialty, some do registrations, some do titles, some do only foreign licenses, meaning they deal only with the free licenses for illegals. The local DMV here can issue a title and do the initial registration but can't do renewals. That now means going to a regional or doing it online. ALL registration renewals are now done online but if you miss a year it means you don't have a PIN code for the renewal and you have to go to a regional office to renew by appointment. For me that means driving an hour and killing the better part of a day at the DMV in hopes they get to you before they close despite having an appointment,
The really screwed up part is that the only way to renew is online or get an appointment online and not everyone has internet or a cell phone. A good many people my own age that I know have never owned a computer and wouldn't know what to do with one if they did.

 

[FuzzyGrub]

Both of my kids live in NJ now. They have told me how much "fun" it is to experience NJ DMV. The NYC DMVs are terrible as well. My daughter would come back to our local DMV, vs dealing with NYC.

My understanding is that NJ wanted to reduce the impact of the Luxury tax on boats. I guess many big cruisers and yachts are bought and sold and registered in NJ.

PS: Thx, I'll make sure my son keeps up with the boat registration.

 

[hoarder]

I'd rather wait in line for and hour rather than drive and hour each way ti still wait in line for an hour.
NJ made about half the DMV offices useless after the 2020 shut down and closed up a good many of the smaller offices or moved them to more metro areas.
I'm a block from the local DMV but they won't do renewals. In the past I used to just mail in the boat and trailer renewals, if I skipped a year I'd just send in the last renewal form with a check by mail but now they won't do that. If you were 'chosen' for online renewal you can only renew online, otherwise you must make an appointment at one of the regional DMV offices.

The people who are really screwed are those who do not have internet, lots of older folks, even those my age don't have computers or access to the internet and likely never will and have no plans on ever getting it.
What its doing is forcing a good many of them to just not renew their registration because they either don't have a car reliable enough to drive an hour or they can't afford the gas to do so. One guy I fish with is almost 70 and he's never owned a computer or cell phone and when the DMV here refused to renew his registration and they returned his payment when he tried to mail it in he gave up and stopped renewing his tags. That was 5 years ago now.

More than half the boats I do see haven't been renewed in years.
When they shut down for 2020 anyone who's registration that was due during that period went un-renewed and since they had then missed a year they were not able to renew online or by mail and were being forced to drive to one of three regional DMV centers to renew.

My own driver's license just came up for renewal and since I have a boat license it requires an in-person visit to renew for a photo ID and to renew it it means a 1.5hr drive each way to Trenton to renew my license for the next four years. Those whose license came due in 2023 were granted a no fee renewal but the rest of us pay full price.
I'm not sure if that was suppose to make up for the bs they caused by going online only or not but it only gave that benefit to about 21% of people with driver's licenses. They also give free licenses to illegals which was the main reason for the re-designating of the various local DMV offices. The one nearest to me is now a 'foreign license center' and no longer does normal renewals or title work and they closed the next two closest offices moving them 45 minutes further away.

I strongly suspect that the lack of boat interest in NJ has a lot to do with how hard it is to get a boat registered here now. If your local DMV no longer does transfers or registrations or they for what ever reason assigned you to an office for renewal over an hour away it can mean a day off work just to change a title and register a boat, then add in the weight slip now required to register a trailer which means having to tow it with no tags to the scale to get a weight slip without the boat on it makes it difficult at best for some people.

There are plenty who want a boat and I'd venture to guess most want a 14-15ft boat to stay with the cheaper registration, $12 to 12ft/$28 for 16ft up, plus $18 for the boat drivers license and $60 for the title. All of that to maybe bring home a couple fish they warn us not to eat.

None of which makes any boat worth less. If I go to the grocery store and steak is $15/lb and I can't afford it, they don't lower the price so it fits my budget.
The way I see it is as new boats get more and more expensive and now even rarer, the value of used boats also goes up. 20 years ago new 14 ft boats were $1,500, now you can't touch the same boat for less than $6k. 20 years ago a good used truck was $1,500, now your lucky to find one with wheels and and an engine that needs work for $4k and new trucks then were $25k, now they start at $78k. I thought it was bad when I saw the sticker on my last new truck 22 years ago at $54k but I as able to bargain it down to $42, now they won't budge and dealers are marking up boats and trucks over retail because they know that those who want a new one will pay it. They just finance it for the next 20 years.

A good many of us also buy our boats and trucks for life barring something bad going wrong with either.
I will never sell my 16ft boat and have collected enough spare parts and engines for it to last me a lifetime.
It has to because there's no one here that'll give more than pocket change for it if I were to sell it.

Dealers won't sell used boats now because of liability and most say they can't get new boats because manufacturers are concentrating only on the higher dollar boats that they can make more money on. Why build a 14ft utility boat that they may make a grand on when they can build a 16ft full package boat that they can make $10k on. This leaves basically FB and CL as your only source for a used boat'

 

[mirrocraft16]

In theory there should be a huge excess of 14-16ft utility boats, they've been building them for 70 years now and aluminum really doesn't rot very easily and I've never seen one at the scrap yards here in any shape.
Where did they all go? The number of them registered certainly doesn't suggest people are still using them.


I find hundreds of 12ft aluminum boats of all makes for sale all the time, 12ft boats vs 14ft boats are more than 20 to 1 in the various listings and 16ft boats make up maybe 1 out of 100 or so here. If you ask a dealer they say all they sell is 16ft boats when they can get them. Myself I've owned over 25 14ft boats over the years, generally selling the old one for something I liked better. None stayed listed for more than a day or two here. Now I see dozens listed that have been listed for months or years that are legit titled boats but there's double that amount of boats with no paperwork that can never be registered again without the original owner signing off the original title.


A relative of mine passed away in 2015 who owned four aluminum boats and one junk Bayliner Capri in the middle of PA. I was co- executor of the estate with another family member who was left one tractor and one boat, neither of which were they interested in taking or bothering with. They had zero interest in helping and all but refused to accept responsibility for any of it. Vehicles there required both excecutors to sign off of each title but the other excecutor couldn't be bothered and it took four years to get a judge to eliminate them from being co-executor. They didn't live local and did not feel it was worth their time to get papers notorized to even sign off of it.

In the end I was cleared to proceed and I listed three of the boats for sale in PA. All cheap, all with papers.

The pos Bayliner with a stuck 50hp Force motor sold first for $1,800 as-is. The 12 and 14ft boats, both older Starcraft models sat for 8 years at $800 without so much as an email and I kept the 16ft Mirrocraft for myself, Since PA don't title boats bringing them to NJ was a problem, which in the end I had to do and it meant preparing page long hand written statements from the Estate, death certificates, and copies of the County court's order of sole executorship plus a 30 day wait to obtain a NJ title for the 14ft and a registration for each in my name. They both sat for a year on CL for sale for $800 and $1000 with no takers and no emails. I took them to a buddies place in MO where they sold in three days for $1000 and $1,500 each. ( I couldn't take any of the motors there since PA doesn't title outboards and it just wasn't worth the hassle to deal with).

The guy who bought the 14ft boat answered the CL ad there and came from ME to buy it, He said he saw the ad listed in NJ but didn't want to drive that far but was fine with driving from Portland ME to SW MO but not to NJ?