BOATPro's August Count Undoes July's Falling-Volume Verdict

What does BOATPro's new count say, and how does it clash with July's?

BOATPro recorded 281 sales of yachts 24 metres and over in the first half of 2026, worth a combined EUR 4.05 billion, the third consecutive year of growth in both count and value - a reading that arrives a month after Northrop & Johnson's own first-half figures, covered on this site in July, showed pre-owned sales volume falling 8 per cent over the same period.

BOATPro is Boat International's specialist market-intelligence arm, tracking more than 13,000 superyachts worldwide and logging brokerage sales, new-build orders and fleet movements as they happen. Its figures, released on 31 August, split the first half into 129 transactions in the first quarter and 152 in the second, counting any yacht of 24 metres or above regardless of whether it was new or pre-owned. The combined value of EUR 4.05 billion compares with EUR 3.61 billion across 272 sales in the first half of 2025 and EUR 2.21 billion across 225 sales in the first half of 2024, arriving just ahead of the Monaco Yacht Show on 23 to 26 September, the event the report is timed to precede.

That reads as flat contradiction against what Northrop & Johnson published on 16 July and this desk reported at the time: 326 pre-owned yachts sold, down from 354 a year earlier, an 8 per cent fall in volume, even though the value of those sales rose to USD 3.51 billion. The two figures are not describing the same population. Northrop & Johnson's count is confined to pre-owned brokerage sales inside its own tracked inventory; BOATPro's count spans the wider market, new-build and pre-owned together. A yacht market can shrink by one definition and grow by the other in the same six months, and the honest answer to 'did the market grow' is that it depends which transactions you were counting in the first place.

Where is the extra volume in BOATPro's count actually coming from?

The gap between the two counts is concentrated in new-build and larger-yacht sales that Northrop & Johnson's pre-owned-only figure excludes by definition, and both houses' own segment data point the same direction once that is accounted for.

BOATPro's average asking value of a yacht sold has risen every year it has published the figure: EUR 9.83 million in 2024, EUR 13.28 million in 2025 and EUR 14.4 million in 2026. Its clearest single data point is the 50-to-70-metre band, where it counted 26 transactions in the first half of 2026 against 17 in the same period of 2025, a rise of 52.9 per cent - bigger, newer yachts pulling the average and the total up together.

Northrop & Johnson's own July figures, for all that its headline volume fell, showed the identical pattern inside its new-build breakout: sales in the 164-to-197-foot range, roughly 50 to 60 metres, rose 150 per cent to 10 units from 4, and the 98-to-131-foot new-build segment, 30 to 40 metres, was up 18 per cent to 44 units. Read that way, the two reports do not actually disagree. Northrop & Johnson's pre-owned volume genuinely fell, and new-build and larger-yacht sales genuinely rose enough, in a market BOATPro counts and Northrop & Johnson's headline figure does not, to turn an 8 per cent pre-owned decline into a market-wide increase once new-build is added back in.

Do the two houses at least agree on the single biggest sale of the half?

They agree on the yacht, Feadship's Moonrise, sold through Burgess for an asking price both now put at EUR 325 million, but they do not agree on how long she is - 99.9 metres by Northrop & Johnson's own figure of 327 feet 9 inches, against 100.7 metres in BOATPro's list.

Both reports name Moonrise as the half's largest transaction, delivered by Feadship in 2020 and sold by Burgess after roughly 159 days on the market. Northrop & Johnson's July figures, covered on this site at the time, already put her asking price at EUR 325 million; BOATPro's August list repeats the same figure. What the two houses do not reconcile is the yacht's own length: Northrop & Johnson's stated 327 feet 9 inches converts to 99.9 metres, while BOATPro lists her at 100.7 metres. Neither discrepancy is explained in either report, and neither publishes the price Moonrise actually closed at - both use the word asking, and the gap between an asking price and a closing price on a yacht this size is routinely millions of dollars that nobody involved in the sale has made public.

BOATPro's list of the half's largest deals, not previously reported on this site, also includes Mirage, the 89-metre Amels formerly named Here Comes the Sun, carrying an estimated asking value near EUR 165 million; Hampshire, at 66.3 metres and listed at EUR 85 million; and Jubilee, at 61 metres and listed at EUR 73.5 million. All three sit inside the 50-to-70-metre band that BOATPro says grew 52.9 per cent, the same size range Northrop & Johnson's own new-build figures show accelerating - two different datasets naming different transactions but pointing at the same part of the fleet.

What should an owner take from a market that gets recounted every few weeks?

An owner should treat July's falling pre-owned volume and August's rising total volume as two accurate views of the same market rather than a contradiction to resolve in favour of one report, because a seller of a mid-size pre-owned boat and a buyer ordering new are, in effect, standing in two different markets that happen to share a size chart.

A seller with a pre-owned yacht in the size range where turnover is soft is competing in the market Northrop & Johnson described in July: more listings, more price cuts, and eight per cent fewer deals than a year earlier. A buyer weighing a new-build order in the 50-to-70-metre range, or a seller of a yacht in that band, is closer to the market BOATPro described in August: rising prices, a third straight year of growth, and the strongest single-segment gain either house has published this year. Both descriptions are true at once, and neither cancels the other. Even Northrop & Johnson's own brokerage arm, as distinct from the market it measures, reported its sold activity up 27.8 per cent year on year in the same report that showed the wider pre-owned count falling - a single brokerage can outperform a market it is also describing as shrinking, which is one more reminder that a headline percentage is only as good as the population behind it.

What is not in dispute is the direction of value: average and total prices are up under every measure either house publishes, and the 40-to-70-metre band is the strongest part of the market by any count that breaks size out at all. The Monaco Yacht Show on 23 to 26 September will be the next public test of whether that holds, and it will also be the next moment two trade reports have a chance to agree, or fail to agree, on details as basic as how long the year's most expensive yacht actually is.