Every year hundreds of boats change hands across the Caribbean through yacht brokers, and we pay close attention to all of that traffic. With our attention to the data and the details, and full-time resident brokers located throughout the Caribbean region, we know the market and what is happening in it better than anyone.

As The Informative Brokers, we pride ourselves on being well informed and on sharing what we know with you. We strongly believe that the best sale or purchase of a yacht comes directly from putting information in your hands and helping you understand what it means relative to your goals.

So here is a summary of what has been happening, and what it says about the market: when boats sell, where, what kind, at what price, and how long they take. This is the picture that emerged this year. Let's dive in.

The figures here come from soldboats.com (YachtWorld) and Yachtr.com's MLS database, plus BVI Yacht Sales' own internal transaction records. Not every brokerage shares its sales on either platform, so the record is not the whole market; it is, however, the best available data set, and it is the same record for both years, so the trends are real even if the absolute counts are not.

We combined the two sources, matched boats across them by name, year, make and model so that no sale is counted twice, and kept only boats located in the Caribbean at the time of sale. Three superyacht transactions over $10 million in the first year were set aside because they belong to a different market. Sale prices are as reported; time to sell is the number of days a boat was listed before it sold.

The number of brokerages recording a sale fell from 93 to 77, which reflects consolidation after drastic price increases by YachtWorld put some firms out of the market, and some firms no longer reporting their sold data in protest; it did not result in fewer boats being sold, and the market remains strong. The buyer paid, on the median boat, 90 percent of the asking price in both years, a useful benchmark for anyone pricing a listing, and one that follows our own model of setting asking prices no more than 10 percent above appraised value.

The Caribbean has traditionally had a strong late-winter and spring selling season, but in recent years a new pattern has emerged: two selling seasons. The first is the run-up to the winter cruising season: sales climb through October and November and peak in December, when buyers want a boat in the water for the holidays and the charter fleets turn over. The second runs from May through July, when the season ends, owners who have decided to sell put boats on the market, and buyers who spent the winter looking make their move.

January and April are the quiet months in both years; September is quiet too, though the record for the last three weeks of 2026 is still filling in. The second year was stronger at both ends. December 2025 recorded 54 sales against 48 the year before, February 2026, at 43, nearly doubled the 22 of February 2025, and July 2026 was the busiest summer month at 51. By quarter, the fourth calendar quarter and the second calendar quarter carry the year, with roughly 120 sales each, and the first quarter runs about 15 percent lighter.

The northern Caribbean, from the Dominican Republic through Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands to St Martin, is where roughly six in ten Caribbean brokerage sales happen, and its share grew slightly in the second year. The middle chain from Antigua to Barbados, which includes the large French-flagged market in Martinique and Guadeloupe, accounts for about a fifth. The south, Grenada and Trinidad above all, is the hurricane-season storage and refit hub and produces a steady 13 to 15 percent. The western Caribbean barely registers on these platforms.

The biggest single move was in the British Virgin Islands, which went from 71 recorded sales to 104 and displaced Puerto Rico as the busiest market in the region. The BVI is the centre of the crewed and bareboat charter industry, and the steady release of former charter catamarans into private ownership, together with a strong private-owner market at Nanny Cay, Virgin Gorda and Road Town, drove that growth.

Puerto Rico, at 80 then 68, is a different market: overwhelmingly power boats, centre consoles and sportfish sold through local dealers. The US Virgin Islands held steady in the high fifties to low sixties. Martinique rose from 49 to 57, Grenada eased from 51 to 48, Antigua and St Martin were stable.

The Dominican Republic is worth a note. Luperon is a well-known cruiser waypoint and storage anchorage, and in the first year it recorded 19 sales, 13 of them through BVI Yacht Sales. In the second year the recorded count fell to seven, of which six were ours. The market there is small and price-sensitive, but it is clearly a place where sellers can position a boat for economical storage while it is for sale.

By count, the Caribbean is a sailing market: sailing monohulls and sailing catamarans together are about two thirds of boats sold in both years. By value it is a catamaran market: sailing catamarans alone are close to half of all dollars, with a median sale of roughly $380,000 in both years, against a median of about $90,000 for a sailing monohull.

Power monohulls are a quarter to a third of value, concentrated in Puerto Rico and the USVI. The fastest-growing category is the power catamaran, which went from 17 sales to 28 and from seven to ten percent of value, with a median above $400,000.

Sailing monohull sales slipped from 176 to 157 while catamaran sales rose from 121 to 130, continuing the long shift of the cruising market toward multihulls. The makes tell the same story. Beneteau, Jeanneau and Lagoon led the first year; Lagoon, Beneteau and Leopard led the second, with Fountaine Pajot fourth both times and Bali, the fastest-growing catamaran brand in the region, entering the top seven. The most-sold single models were ex-charter catamarans: the Leopard 40 in the first year, the Leopard 51 Powercat, Lagoon 42 and Bali 5.4 in the second.

The fleet changing hands is getting younger. Boats built in 2010 or later were 48 percent of sales in the first year and 60 percent in the second, and boats built in 2020 or later went from 59 to 96. The median build year of a sold boat moved from 2009 to 2014. That is the charter fleets turning over newer tonnage, and it is the single biggest driver of the rise in the median price.

The centre of the market by count is the $100,000 to $250,000 band, with 120 to 130 sales a year, followed by $250,000 to $500,000. The entry end, boats under $50,000, is a steady 50 to 55 sales a year and is served by only a handful of brokerages. The growth was all at the top: the $500,000 to $1 million band went from 35 sales to 53, and sales over $1 million from 28 to 34. Boats over $500,000 were 55 percent of all dollars in the first year and 61 percent in the second.

By length, the 40 to 49 foot boat is the heart of the Caribbean market, at 40 percent of sales in both years, and the 50 to 59 foot band grew from 58 to 70 as larger catamarans came through.

The median Caribbean boat was listed for 182 days before it sold in the first year and 176 in the second. Roughly a quarter of boats sell inside 90 days and a fifth take more than a year. Power monohulls move fastest, at around four months. Sailing catamarans, the most valuable segment, took a median of 221 days in the first year and 188 in the second, a real improvement that reflects strong demand for late-model charter cats.

Sailing monohulls were steady at around six months. Pricing matters more than category: across both years, boats that eventually sold did so at about 90 percent of asking, and the ones that took longest were typically the ones that started furthest from that number.

We are in this report as a participant, and we share this data to inform readers not only of how we did, but of the market trends as well. In 2024-25 BVI Yacht Sales closed 73 recorded Caribbean sales, 17 percent of the market and more than double the next-largest brokerage. In 2025-26 we closed 88, 20 percent of the market and nearly three times the next-largest.

We were the only brokerage to record a sale in every month of both years, and one of only a handful to sell in all four categories: sailing monohull, sailing catamaran, power monohull and power catamaran.

What we sold changed with the market. In 2024-25 our book was weighted toward older sailing monohulls and the entry end: we handled 30 percent of every sailing monohull sold in the Caribbean and 41 percent of every boat under $50,000. Through 2025 and into 2026 we kept that base (29 percent of sailing monohulls, a quarter of sub-$50,000 sales) and grew the top: our share of catamaran sales went from 11 to 17 percent, making us the largest seller of catamarans in the region; our share of sales over $500,000 went from 8 to 16 percent, more than any other brokerage; our share of boats built in 2020 or later went from 8 to 14 percent, again the most in the region; and our share of the $250,000 to $500,000 band nearly tripled.

We sold boats from 22 to 67 feet, from a $15,000 RIB to a $3.3 million Fountaine Pajot 67, across ten countries. We are the largest brokerage in the Caribbean because we are passionate about all boats, not only the expensive ones.

Within any segment our prices track the market: our median sailing catamaran sold within a few percent of the market median in both years, and our pre-2010 monohulls sold at the market median. Where we differ is speed. In the first year our listings sold in a median of 146 days against 199 for the rest of the market; in the second, 184 against 176 overall, but in the segments that carry the value the gap stayed wide: our sailing catamarans sold in 158 days against 242 in the first year and 120 against 195 in the second, and our sailing monohulls in 151 against 225 and then 188 against 213.

A catamaran listed with us has, on this record, sold in roughly two thirds of the time it takes elsewhere.

We also work with the rest of the industry. In the second year 21 of our sales involved a second broker, twelve of them with another brokerage, on both sides of the deal: six were our listings sold by another firm's buyer, and six were other firms' listings that we brought a buyer to. Co-brokerage is how the Caribbean market works at its best, and we are glad to be part of it.

• The catamaran cycle has more to run. Charter fleets placed in 2019 to 2022 are reaching phase-out, and late-model 42 to 52 foot cats are the most liquid boats in the region. Owners of these boats are entering a very competitive market; buyers should expect to move quickly and pay close to asking when they see the right asking price, set by the sellers who want to be next to sell.
• The entry end is under-served. Fifty-plus boats a year sell under $50,000 and very few brokerages will list them. For a first-time buyer or a cruiser trading down, this is where the value is, and it is a segment we will keep serving.
• The BVI is still the region's busiest market. Buyers who want choice, infrastructure and easy surveys and sea trials will find all three there; sellers benefit from the deepest pool of buyers in the Caribbean.
• Price to the market. Across nearly 900 sales in two years the median boat sold at 90 percent of asking, and the boats that took longest were the ones priced furthest above it. An honest asking price is still the fastest route to a sale.
• The southern Caribbean and the French islands are large, stable markets that most English-speaking brokerages under-serve. Grenada in particular combines strong storage infrastructure with a steady flow of cruising boats.

If you have a boat you want to sell, listing it with BVI Yacht Sales puts the best data in boat sales behind your sale.

Our brokers live and work in the markets described in this report, from the BVI and the US Virgin Islands to Grenada, Antigua, St Maarten and the Dominican Republic, and we have now expanded to Florida and Maryland to serve owners and buyers on the US East Coast as well.

Every seller who lists with us receives a report every month, built for their boat: the advertising traffic it is generating, how it is performing against comparable listings on the market, what buyers are responding to, and our specific advice on what to do to get the best sale. Nobody else in the region gives you that.