Narrowboat Shared Ownership
You may be wondering if owning a share, and in particular owning a share in Andante, would be right for you?
What are the best things about shared ownership?
- Great value for money when compared to either full ownership or holiday hire.
- The sense of ownership and familiarity that is missing when you use holiday hire boats.
- Benefiting from the experience, expertise and efforts of other owners.
- Sharing the responsibility and workload of ownership (as well as the expense).
- Great flexibility: if you want more time on board you can buy more shares (up to 3) when they become available. In our scheme, members have first refusal as shares go 'on the market'.
- Those who want a fully serviced boat holiday scheme so they can simply enjoy their boating holidays without getting involved in managing the scheme or looking after the boat. They should be looking at a Managed scheme: more expensive but still good value for money when compared to either full ownership or holiday hire.
- Those who don't have any appropriate knowledge, skills or experience to contribute, unless they are very keen to learn and are comfortable with a steep learning curve. Even then, one of the private schemes that makes more use of boatyard services might be more suitable: less expensive than a Managed scheme and excellent value for money.
- Those who are uncomfortable accepting democratic decisions that they disagree with and didn't vote for!
- Those whose first instinct is to think "I don't like that but I can get them to change it".
- Those who are not willing to either spend a little of their holiday time ensuring the boat is thoroughly clean and ready for the next user or alternatively to pay a boatyard to do it.
- N.B. Andante is Dog Friendly. Dog owners will be expected to vacuum the boat thoroughly and to make sure their dogs are kept off the bedding. However, they cannot be held responsible for difficulties experienced by subsequent users with allergies. There are other schemes that don't allow dogs on board so they would be more suitable for people with pet hair allergies.
- Those who fancy boat ownership but lack knowledge or confidence to take on their own.
- Those who have hired holiday boats but find them to be expensive, unfamiliar and impersonal.
- Those who love the canals and boating but cannot justify the capital and running costs of owning their own boat.
- Those who have owned their own boat but found they made limited use of it.
- Those who own a wide beam boat but want to cruise the narrow canals as well as wide ones and rivers.
- Those who own a boat on one of the extremities of the canal system and don't have time to get their own boat around the rest of it.
- Yes, provided it remains as a 'whole' share, with a 'lead' owner. Joint owners must all be registered with the owners' club.
- Joint owners share a single vote and a single 'allocation of weeks' and must decide amongst themselves how they mange that.
- Some people certainly make subdividing a share work well for them but usually they do it with family and/or close friends and often they truly share some of the time by being on board together.
- The full share realistically gives you just one week during 'peak time' plus two more during British Summer Time, one of which is likely to be April or October. In our case at least, the two good summer weeks represent excellent value for money even if you don't use any others.
- Once the share is subdivided, you are down to a peak time week in alternate years and so on unless you are able to take redundant weeks, which often arise at short notice.
- There are share schemes that are geared up for 1/20th or 1/24th shares, as opposed to jointly owning 1/10th shares like ours and some that sell specific weeks, timeshare style. Perhaps one of these might be more suitable if you really do only want one or two summer weeks and aren't bothered about peak time.
- Selling half your share to a stranger could be fraught with difficulties!
- Andante won't return to 'base' at the end of your holiday, except perhaps during the winter, so will get around much more of the system and enable you to do one way trips.
- We won't pay marinas/boatyards for 'turnarounds' (cleaning, water filling etc.) unless you choose to (at your own expense) during your allocated time.
- Andante doesn't have pump out toilets so emptying won't be done for you. However, it will usually be free of charge and facilities to empty cassettes are much more numerous than pump out facilities. If necessary, the holding tanks can be taken to a boatyard or sanitary station in the car.
- 'Handovers' can take place almost anywhere that there is an accessible mooring.
- We, the owners, will do as much of the routine maintenance and minor repairs as possible: please don't claim to have skills and expertise that are beyond you - it may all end in tears!
- Our annual costs will be lower than most boatshare schemes and the only boat related holiday expenses will be fuel and other consumables used + any losses or breakages.
- We operate on a 'contingency fund' basis in the hope that there will always be capital available for unexpected costs and/or improvement projects in the longer term. Some of the other schemes with low monthly or annual charges only budget for routine fixed and running costs: when there are unexpected expenses or refurbishments/improvements, they levy additional charges to fund them!
