High spec. and great value Beneteau Oceanis 473 for sale in Greece

This week the euro fell to a seven year low against British pound, currently being valued at £0.71 and a 12 year low against the US dollar when it fell to $1.054.

If an American buyer was purchasing a €1 milion euro yacht this week it would cost them $320,000 less than if they bought the yacht a year ago. That’s because the price after exchange will have dropped from $1.38 million 12 months ago to $1.06 million now. The euro could still fall even further to a near 14 year low against the US Dollar.

The falling euro will attract yacht buyers from outside the eurozone. “This is especially true for products that don’t require to be geophysically located in the Eurozone,” explained Mudassar Malir, an FX dealer at FairFX. “So whilst sales of boats is likely to go up, property sales may not as they may be affected by economic woes of the Eurozone nation they lie in.”

“With some of the biggest moves in the USD/EUR pair, purchases of yachts denominated in Euros will likely come from the US and the far east the most. Not to forget the UK as the pound hits 7 year highs against the Euro.”

This is certainly a trend that we have seen growing for some time at Nicolle Associates with more and more buyers buying on currency than a specific make, model and specification and the curve continues to accelerate. However since the word recession buyers are all focussed on good condition, well maintained boats.

Obviously, the opposite applies to owners selling yachts in euros, and it’s not just Euro, Pounds sterling and US Dollars that are affected. The Swiss franc jumped 20% against the euro in one days trading earlier this year. “The currency market has been extremely volatile in the last 12 months with individual currency pairs fluctuating by between 13% to 30%,” Lloyd Eagles, Head of Trading at OPT FX said.