Ahead of his 40th birthday this past summer, Eric Dela Cruz decided to fulfill a lifelong dream and buy a yacht. With his budget, he figured it’d take no time at all.
“I thought, ‘Hey, if you can afford $1.5 million, or $2 million, it should be like this’” — said the restaurateur, snapping his fingers — “‘Bring me a boat tomorrow.’ But no.”
Yacht broker Trenton Carroll knows this all too well. Before the pandemic, it was typical for him to have up to $10 million worth of inventory at any given time and it could take six months to make a sale, even after tacking on discounts and other incentives. Now he rarely has anything in stock; the other week, a pre-owned sailboat was snapped up, sight unseen, 12 hours after he listed it.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.