"A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money" "A house is a hole in the ground into which you throw money" "A car is a hole in space into which you throw money" "An apartment is a hole in someone elses space into which you throw money"All these are true. However a house wont rock you to sleep at night, in MOST parts of the US anyway. If you're neighbors get on your nerves its harder to pick up your house and spend the night somewhere quieter. And its REALLY hard to take your house with you on vacation..
Its worth note that boats have their many down sides, most houses dont sink! (Well, not in the north east anyway). But then, there are books on all these issues. The ones to look at if you are serious to discover why I think living aboard is REALLY neat would be in the class of "liveaboard" boating.. This is VERY different from weekend boating which most people think of when they think of boats.
This turns out not to be an easy task. Most boat sales are aimed at the weekend crew with too much money on their hands. I'm looking to spend about $1,000.00/ft on something, which for the period I'm looking I'm told is about right. I'd also like to do direct owner financing and cut the middle guy out of the end price :-).
At the moment, I search. I also look in the mean time for a good boat to perhaps lease in this capacity (to own) but my time is finite and so I search slowly. I will be going to the boat show in Feb here and hope to make much more progress in my quest at that point. I'll keep you posted.
If you have a boat which you think meets the above and would like to talk to me about it, please send me email and I would love to talk more with you.