Charlie, from what I found out about most of my boat customers that had boats in that price range was that they couldn't afford it. When I was working for the yacht dealer ship, I didn't work on anything smaller than 30 ft, when the market dropped, so did my customers, their boats were being repo'd right and left. They played the game, looked the part, threw money around like they didn't care, but when one thing didn't go right, it all came apart. Still today i don't have that many big boat customers, the boat yards around here don't handle anywhere near what they used to. I have a friend that works for a viking dealer, he was telling me about having boats listed for sale and they couldn't find the boat, the owner would keep it in the islands to prevent it from being repo'd or taken for taxes, if they found some one that was interested in the boat, it was cheaper to fly them over than bring the boat back. The Charleston,SC area is listed as the 6th largest concentration of wealth in the Southeast, there are plenty of boating opportunities around here, and year around boating, but you still don't see that many boats in that price bracket. Now once you get above that price range, its a different story. last month City Marina had 6 boats that exceeded 150 ft tied up at one time. Most of those boats are listed as owned by an offshore private business. There is one that's owned by a local(Themis, 153' Trinity). The owner is the 5 th largest libel attorney office in the country. That will tell you where a lot fo the big money comes from
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