RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Tomek Wrzesinski has spent more than 20 years selling supersized boats to the uberwealthy, and he's found one nearly foolproof way to get a client to bite.
It starts with sending a cryptic weekend text message: " Maybe I have something for you. I just need to check if it's still available. It's an off-market offer ." The last three words are usually enough to cinch the deal. "After 20 minutes, you have an answer: Yes, yes, yes," says the Monaco-based yacht broker.
Wrzesinski's method takes advantage of his place in a discreet network of off-market brokers who help the rich purchase boats without them being officially listed for sale. Thanks to the AI boom , a wave of newly minted billionaires is in the market for only the best of the best of yachts — yachts so large and opulent, they're typically never listed on any exchange, but are only heard of through word-of-mouth. It is the market, in other words, for people who want to purchase a yacht that could be worth several million to several billion dollars — the sorts of boats padded out with glass pools, beach club apparatuses, and saunas in the back.
Yacht broker Tomek Wrzesinski says off-market listings are common in the luxury market. Courtesy of Tomek Wrzesinski
The trend attests to the enormous amount of wealth that has been created in markets over the past year, as well as the increasing lengths the rich will go to conceal their spending. It's difficult to quantify off-market transactions, but what data there is available suggests that they're on the rise. Known off-market transactions are on track to increase by around 5% this year compared to 2025, according to data that Super Yacht Times Intelligence shared with me. Anders Kurtén, the CEO of the brokerage Fraser Yachts, estimates that off-market transactions have probably doubled since 2019.
Wrzesinski, who says inbound business has increased by around 300% since 2019, thinks off-market transactions have surged in part because brokers have adopted this sales tactic to enhance the luxury experience .
"There are a lot of tricks when you are selling very expensive things, but one of them is that you show that you are treating your clients in a very special way," he says.
Fraser's Kurtén says the amount of wealth created in markets over the last several years, combined with a huge bottleneck of large ships being built , has kept off-market transactions humming. In some cases, brokers seeking a ship for a client will approach owners of large yachts cold, asking whether they're open to a sale.
"As with anything, if there's the right price to be found, a lot of stuff that isn't officially for sale ends up being for sale," he adds.
'They are treating the boats like toys'
The boom in off-market superyachts comes at a time when the broader yacht market has moored. Sales of all yachts — a loosely defined category that's thought to comprise ships of at least 10 meters long — are on the decline based on most publicly available broker data. By contrast, sales of superyachts, which are generally defined as yachts more than 30 meters, clocked in at 442 in 2025, up 12% from the prior year, per data from BOATPro, a yacht intelligence firm. Sales are continuing to soar this year, hitting a 3-year high in the first-half of 2026. The even more exclusive categories of mega-yachts (between 60 and 100 meters) and gigayachts (over 100 meters, or about the length of a football field) are the strongest in the yacht market. Not only are the number of sales in these categories increasing, but these ultra-exclusive boats are also going for more: Data from the brokerage Camper & Nicholsons shows final asking prices for megayachts and gigayachts soared 33% and 38%, respectively, last year.
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The top tiers were also the only two categories that saw a decrease in the average time spent on the market before purchase, a testament to the fact that only the upper echelon of boats is getting snapped up.
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The fuel for this red-hot superyacht market is the AI boom, as well as the huge run-up in stock and crypto prices in recent years, John Hermanson, an off-market yacht broker based in Kuwait, says. The world has minted 400 billionaires so far this year, bringing the total to 3,428 worldwide, the largest number ever recorded. The group holds more than $20 trillion in combined wealth.
Boats are complicated status symbols . Wealthy people who may ascribe to the " quiet luxury " philosophy in other parts of their lives may be pushed by the spirit of one-upmanship that is a huge driving force behind the upper-end of the yacht market, Wrzesinski says. After all, it's hard to be subtle when your boat is longer than a blue whale. And the appetite for upgrades doesn't end: Generally, a yacht stays with a buyer for around three years before the itch to upgrade finally becomes too hard to ignore, Wrzesinski tells me. He pointed to one of his clients, who recently sold a 60-foot yacht and purchased a new one after the embarrassment of docking between two larger ships in Europe .
"The truth is that when you buy a boat, and you go somewhere, you meet other people with boats and somebody always has a bigger boat than you," he says. "You will buy a bigger one. It's always like this."
People are motivated to invest in their ships for one main ...
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