Reading a Vessel Like a Buyer: A Due Diligence Checklist Before You Make an Offer
ShipMarketSquare's own advice to sellers is to disclose everything up front: class status, survey history, honest condition. That's good advice, but it only protects a buyer who knows what to do with the information once it's in front of them. Here's the other half of that conversation: what a serious buyer should actually check, in what order, before an offer goes anywhere near a Memorandum of Agreement.
Start with the IMO number, not the listing description. Every qualifying commercial vessel carries a permanent seven digit IMO number that follows it through every sale, rename, and re-flagging. Before taking a seller's word for a vessel's specifications, pull the IMO-linked record yourself. If the listing's numbers and the registry's numbers don't match, that's not a typo to fix. It's a question to ask before going any further.
Get the class record before the photos. A vessel's classification history tells you more than its exterior ever will. Look for which society currently classes the vessel and whether it has changed societies recently, since that can point to deferred maintenance or an unresolved dispute with the previous class. Check the date of the last special survey. Most importantly, check for any outstanding conditions of class, meaning a defect the class society has flagged as requiring correction to maintain classification. A buyer who discovers one after signing an MOA typically has grounds to walk away and recover their deposit, but by then weeks and legal fees have already gone into finding that out. Ask for this in writing before making an offer, not after.
Cross check the price against real comparables, not the asking price. There's no blue book value for a fifteen year old Aframax. Buyers who skip this step end up anchored to whatever number the seller wrote down. Pull recent comparable sales (brokers like Clarksons and BRS publish indicative valuations) and weigh the asking price against them. A price above comparables isn't automatically a problem, but it should come with a reason: a recent drydocking, a clean class record with no near term survey due, unusually low running hours. If the listing doesn't explain the premium, ask for it directly.
Read the trading history for wear patterns, not just miles. Where a vessel has traded tells you what kind of wear to expect. A tanker that's spent years in sanctioned crude or otherwise sensitive trades carries different risk than one on a stable long haul iron ore route. A vessel with Great Lakes or ice class trading history has been built and maintained to a different standard than one that's spent its life in warm water coastal work. None of this shows up in a spec sheet. It only shows up if you ask the seller directly and verify against AIS or port call history where you can.
Confirm operational status before scheduling an inspection. Is the vessel currently trading and available for inspection underway, or laid up? A laid up vessel that hasn't run its main engine in months carries risks an active vessel doesn't, and it changes what a pre purchase survey needs to cover. Get this confirmed before spending money getting a surveyor to the vessel.
Ask why the vessel is for sale, and expect a real answer. Fleet restructuring, owner retirement, a vessel aging out relative to newbuild economics: these are all legitimate reasons, and a seller who states one directly is giving useful information. A seller who won't answer, or answers vaguely, is a seller worth doing more diligence on, not less.
Verify at the source, not at the listing. A platform that pulls specifications and photos directly from IMO-linked maritime registries, rather than relying on what a seller typed into a form, gives you a head start on the first two steps above. The rest is still on you.
Verified vessel data starts with the IMO number. Browse listings at ShipMarketSquare.com.
ShipMarketSquare's own advice to sellers is to disclose everything up front: class status, survey history, honest condition. That's good advice, but it only protects a buyer who knows what to do with the information once it's in front of them. Here's the other half of that conversation: what a serious buyer should actually check, in what order, before an offer goes anywhere near a Memorandum of Agreement.
Start with the IMO number, not the listing description. Every qualifying commercial vessel carries a permanent seven digit IMO number that follows it through every sale, rename, and re-flagging. Before taking a seller's word for a vessel's specifications, pull the IMO-linked record yourself. If the listing's numbers and the registry's numbers don't match, that's not a typo to fix. It's a question to ask before going any further.
Get the class record before the photos. A vessel's classification history tells you more than its exterior ever will. Look for which society currently classes the vessel and whether it has changed societies recently, since that can point to deferred maintenance or an unresolved dispute with the previous class. Check the date of the last special survey. Most importantly, check for any outstanding conditions of class, meaning a defect the class society has flagged as requiring correction to maintain classification. A buyer who discovers one after signing an MOA typically has grounds to walk away and recover their deposit, but by then weeks and legal fees have already gone into finding that out. Ask for this in writing before making an offer, not after.
Cross check the price against real comparables, not the asking price. There's no blue book value for a fifteen year old Aframax. Buyers who skip this step end up anchored to whatever number the seller wrote down. Pull recent comparable sales (brokers like Clarksons and BRS publish indicative valuations) and weigh the asking price against them. A price above comparables isn't automatically a problem, but it should come with a reason: a recent drydocking, a clean class record with no near term survey due, unusually low running hours. If the listing doesn't explain the premium, ask for it directly.
Read the trading history for wear patterns, not just miles. Where a vessel has traded tells you what kind of wear to expect. A tanker that's spent years in sanctioned crude or otherwise sensitive trades carries different risk than one on a stable long haul iron ore route. A vessel with Great Lakes or ice class trading history has been built and maintained to a different standard than one that's spent its life in warm water coastal work. None of this shows up in a spec sheet. It only shows up if you ask the seller directly and verify against AIS or port call history where you can.
Confirm operational status before scheduling an inspection. Is the vessel currently trading and available for inspection underway, or laid up? A laid up vessel that hasn't run its main engine in months carries risks an active vessel doesn't, and it changes what a pre purchase survey needs to cover. Get this confirmed before spending money getting a surveyor to the vessel.
Ask why the vessel is for sale, and expect a real answer. Fleet restructuring, owner retirement, a vessel aging out relative to newbuild economics: these are all legitimate reasons, and a seller who states one directly is giving useful information. A seller who won't answer, or answers vaguely, is a seller worth doing more diligence on, not less.
Verify at the source, not at the listing. A platform that pulls specifications and photos directly from IMO-linked maritime registries, rather than relying on what a seller typed into a form, gives you a head start on the first two steps above. The rest is still on you.
Verified vessel data starts with the IMO number. Browse listings at ShipMarketSquare.com.