Is a yacht a good investment?

As a rule, no. A production yacht is a depreciating asset with a high fixed cost of carry, and the charter income available against it rarely covers the depreciation. Yachts can be a good investment of a different kind, as cashflow assets inside a professionally run commercial fleet, which is a different proposition to owning one.

Everything below is an attempt to show the working. Where the evidence is contested we present both figures and say who is behind each, rather than picking the one that suits us.

Practical Sailor, an independent consumer testing publication that takes no advertising from the programmes it assesses, is the strongest source available on charter ownership economics. Its summary of experienced buyers is that a boat in a charter programme loses around 50 percent of its value over the five year programme life, so a USD 600,000 yacht may retain USD 300,000 by the end.

Then it does the arithmetic that most brochures leave out. Payments of USD 2,000 a month over 60 months provide USD 120,000 in revenue, which does not offset the USD 300,000 of depreciation. Guaranteed income in these programmes typically runs at 8 to 9 percent of purchase price a year, and, in the publication's own words, while this helps offset loan payments it does not always lead to covering the purchase price, much less profitability. Down payments of 20 to 25 percent are usual, which is USD 120,000 to USD 150,000 on a roughly USD 600,000 catamaran.

The condition of the asset at handover is the part owners find hardest to price in advance. Ex-charter boats often come back with high engine hours and tired interiors, no bespoke specification, and a refit bill waiting after five years. This is not an outside criticism. The Moorings describes its own returned yachts as ex-charter boats with all the usage expected over a five to six year charter life, and notes that many owners then plan a post-handover refit.

The residual value dispute, presented rather than resolved

Two credible figures exist for what an ex-charter catamaran is worth after five years, and they come from parties with different interests. Practical Sailor, independent, says around 50 percent. Catamaran Guru, a broker that sells these programmes, says 60 percent, and elsewhere 60 to 65 percent. The gap between those two numbers is roughly USD 60,000 to USD 90,000 on a USD 600,000 boat, which is larger than most owners' entire annual budget. We are not in a position to resolve it and we do not think anyone selling you a boat is either.

BoatUS Magazine, using pricing sourced primarily from J.D. Power, describes an S-curve rather than a straight line.

The insurance-driven re-acceleration is the finding almost nobody writes about. It means depreciation is not purely a function of condition. It is partly a function of who is still allowed to insure the boat, and therefore who is still able to buy it.

There is a real case, but it is much narrower than the marketing suggests, and it does not apply to the boat most people are considering.

Knight Frank's Luxury Investment Index closed 2025 down 0.4 percent, stabilising after two years of losses, and stands up 38.6 percent over the decade. Within that, superyachts had a strong year: Knight Frank's Wealth Report 2026 recorded total superyacht sales value up 70 percent year on year, vessels over 70 metres up 60 percent, an average asking price of USD 16.6 million on sold yachts, and the highest number of new yachts entering the market in seven years. Camper and Nicholsons data reported via Yahoo Finance put final asking prices for megayachts of 60 to 100 metres up 33 percent and gigayachts over 100 metres up 38 percent in 2025.

The distinction that matters: appreciation is concentrated in the 60 metre plus scarcity segment, where supply is genuinely constrained and buyers are not price sensitive. Production boats in the 45 to 55 foot range follow the depreciation curve above. In the production segment the investable proposition is cashflow, not capital appreciation, and it always has been.

The wider market in 2025

The two ends of the market moved in opposite directions. Boats Group reported global boat sales nine percent below 2024 by unit, with total value sold falling from USD 10.42 billion to USD 9.97 billion and North American time to sell up 50 days. Superyacht brokerage went the other way: BOAT International's Global Order Book 2026 records 461 sales against 389 the prior year, while Denison, citing BoatPro, reports 470 against 392. Both are drawn from the same underlying platform and we prefer BOAT International's.

A large part of the case for buying a yacht to charter is, in practice, a tax case. It is more contested than it looks. Crystal Stranger, a US tax director quoted by Practical Sailor, argues that it is unlikely an owner will make a profit in a charter programme, and that without profit intent the hobby loss rules apply, with any surviving loss usually being passive and therefore not deductible for most taxpayers. Peter Ankeny, a certified financial planner on the same page, notes that claiming bonus depreciation or Section 179 for a charter yacht often draws scrutiny, with the tax authority typically expecting to see at least 500 hours a year of genuine business participation.

That material is United States framed and is included here only as a description of what other operators pitch. HelmShare does not offer tax advice, does not market to United States persons, and makes no representation about the tax treatment of any investment in any jurisdiction.

HelmShare exists because of the gap between those two conclusions. Charter revenue is real. The cost of one person carrying one hull to capture it is what destroys the return.

HelmShare Prime Fund, L.P. is a Cayman Islands Exempted Limited Partnership. Investors hold limited partnership interests and have no usage rights. The Fund targets a preferred return distributed from charter income across a closed term, with a conventional private-fund waterfall in which the manager shares in profits only after return of capital, the preferred return and a catch-up. The General Partner and Investment Manager is HelmShare LLC, DFSA Category 3C licensed in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The specific rates and fees are published to verified eligible investors.

That structure removes the concentration in a single hull and the private resale problem, and it replaces them with different risks: illiquidity for the full term, no secondary market, dependence on charter demand and utilisation, and a general partner that is also the investment manager, which is a structural conflict we disclose rather than argue away. Returns are targeted, not guaranteed, and your capital is at risk.