What is That Barge Worth?
The first step in buying a barge must be to set out your expected use and preferences. Partial use each year will allow for a smaller living space - guests and full time live aboard call for more space. Until you have prepared your list of expectations it is a waste of time to look at barges with a serious view to making an offer (unless, of course, you are potted with money and regard the investment of a quarter of a million euros as a minor decision). You will need to agree on the use of the boat or you face a number of serious discussions with "she who must be obeyed".
One major factor in making a purchase decision is the degree of trouble-free barging you expect for your investment. An old boat, jury-rigged with 1960's technology by an enthusiastic but naive DIY guy, is not likely to provide freedom from justifiable concern. Further, it is not likely to be easy to fix the problems or install things like bigger fuel tanks without gutting the entire boat. If that is the intent, it may be better to buy a boat that is already an empty shell than pay for the work done to date and then rip it all out.
We have successfully built a full time live-aboard barge with most of the bells and whistles, and would do it again much the same way. That doesn't make us experts on all barges and we don't presume to be. We have looked at a lot of barges, lovelies and not-so-lovelies, over the past several years. We have seen a lot of people enter the barge market, price fixed firmly in mind, reeling from sticker-shock or convinced that there are no good barges out there.
To reduce this trauma we have put together this page with the help of a couple of people who have spent a fair amount of time evaluating barges for purchase. The result is not infallible, and it does not apply to narrow-boats, or contracts to build a turnkey barge, but it will help you plan the probable cost before trudging all over France and Holland looking for the ship of your dreams. It will also provide a level of comfort supporting your purchase decision. How else do you know what a barge is worth?
There is such a thing as wharf appeal. If a barge is beautiful it is worth more than the sum of its parts or features; not double, but ten to twenty thousand Euros more than the functional workup that you might derive from the spreadsheet. This applies to a Tjalk, Spitz, Luxemotor and other Dutch barges. You have to like the style to begin with, so if you have your heart set on a Tjalk, it is not likely that you will pay extra for a Luxemotor.
In the attached spreadsheet we have created a mythical list of requirements based on someone living aboard most, if not all, year. This is reflected in the Required column of X's. When the target barge has the feature required a value is entered in the Barge column corresponding to the value for the condition of the feature. So if it has a single shower, for example, the pump system would be worth 200 Euros whereas a double shower would be worth 400. If the target barge does not have a desired feature the score is marked as 0 and if the barge has a feature that is not required the score is also marked as 0. At the end of the scoring process these need to be reviewed in order to adjust one's evaluation of the target barges.
If you are just starting out, we would suggest that you create a wishlist and a couple of mythical target barges. A barge can cost between 120,000 and 600,000 Euros, which is quite an unmanageable spread. This process should help you get to within about 20,000 Euros in a comparison of two barges, so while it is not perfect, it will be of some help.
One more thing, to avoid any looming battles, this evaluation is based on the requirements of the buyer, not the features of the target barge. It is based on a barge having two bedrooms, a kitchen, salon or sitting area, eating area, wheelhouse, and at least one bathroom. We cannot place a value on a third or fourth bedroom, a sauna, or other features that are more at home in an hotel barge than the average barge owner's palace. This means that the seller may have a tough time reconciling his asking price with the spreadsheet. Our principle is that we are starting from the perspective of what most people seem to want in, or build into, their barges. There will always be the outlying configuration and we state from the get-go that we cannot provide a model for these barges. Pricing is, after all, based on what the market is prepared to pay!
