On the way back home, on New Year’s Day, we came to the conclusion that our deadline was passed; house-on-a-boat dream should end here and house-on-the-ground should come in place. Some tears in Vic’s eyes showed that she didn’t wanted to give up yet. Once home, Vic wanted to extend the deadline a bit and found a boat after all. Screw the smaller boats, let’s go back to the initial idea and find a spitz barge instead. An empty one that we can fill up ourselves with a house. Scanned the whole internet searching for these barges, not easy to find one which wasn’t sold by now. We maybe have to give up after all.
After what we have seen, I concluded the following:
Houseboats in Holland seem to be more expensive and quite poor executed, despite the many sales arguments
Second hand houseboats are quite expensive or quite poor quality;
What is smaller than a Spitz are older boats; Spitzes are typically build around 1950.
Working cargo ships from the size of a Spitz are affordable and very well maintained;
How good the stories from the seller are, you can only judge a boat after you saw it with a specialist on a dry dock. When there is any doubts, make a contract that you want to see the condition of the ship before doing the purchase. This could mean you are paying pulling up the ship (about 1500€), but reduce the risk that you buy a worthless piece of scrap metal.