Boat Bill of Sale: Free Generator and State Requirements

You can write your own boat bill of sale in nineteen of the twenty states covered here, provided it carries the elements the registering agency checks. Only South Carolina's missing-title path rejects a generic document. The layout is yours; the content is not.

A complete bill of sale carries:

• ✓The date of sale and the purchase price, written in figures and words
• ✓Full legal names and addresses of every seller and every buyer
• ✓Year, make, model and length of the vessel
• ✓The 12-character hull identification number
• ✓Engine or outboard make, model, horsepower and serial number
• ✓Trailer make, year and 17-character VIN, if a trailer is included
• ✓Lien status, and a release if a lender has one recorded
• ✓Whether the vessel is state-titled or federally documented
• ✓An as-is clause, if the sale is as-is
• ✓Signatures of all recorded owners

Three omissions cause most rejections. The hull identification number gets left blank because the seller has never looked for it. Lien status gets skipped because the seller assumes a paid loan clears itself, which it does not until the release is recorded. And where a title joins two names with “and”, both owners must sign; Wisconsin rejects a single signature in that case.

One thing a bill of sale does not do is make the sale valid. The sale is complete when the parties agree and perform. The document evidences it, which is why agencies treat it as proof rather than as the operative act.

These are the fields generic templates leave as blank boxes, and they are the reason a marine broker is the right publisher for this document. Every one of them also appears on an insurance proposal.

A hull identification number is exactly 12 characters under federal rule, in four parts:

1. 1 to 3

   Manufacturer code

   The MIC assigned to the builder

2. 4 to 8

   Serial number

   The builder's own hull sequence

3. 9 to 10

   Certification date

   Month and year the hull was certified

4. 11 to 12

   Model year

   A separate field, and often a different year

Positions 9 to 10 and 11 to 12 are separate fields and routinely differ, so a hull certified in September 2025 can legitimately be a 2026 model year. Copying one into the other is the most common data error on a boat sale document.

You will find the HIN stamped on the starboard side of the transom, and a second identical HIN hidden somewhere on the hull.

Two caveats a validator must respect. Boats built or imported before 1 November 1972 have no HIN at all, legitimately. Hulls from between 1972 and 31 July 1984 used earlier formats that will not parse under the current rules. Our generator accepts both rather than failing them.

A trailer is a separate vehicle with a separate title and a 17-character VIN under a different federal rule. It is not the HIN and the two get conflated constantly. Outboard motors are titled separately in five of the twenty states, so record the serial number even where the state does not ask for it.

No. This is the part every legal-forms site leaves out, and it is the one that costs money.

The wording behind the cover we arrange, held here as a primary source, states it plainly:

For the seller, that is a deadline rather than a formality. The policy does not follow the boat, and the only way to keep cover running through the handover is underwriters' written agreement obtained before the date of sale.

For the buyer, there is no inherited cover: from the moment of signature until your own policy incepts, the boat is uninsured, and closing that window is yours to do. Other insurers word it differently, but the same event ends the cover; the federal rule invalidating a Certificate of Documentation on transfer works the same way.

The useful part for the buyer is that the sale price on the document you just generated is the cleanest evidence of agreed value an underwriter can have, because it is a recent arm's-length transaction on the actual hull.

Agreed value is the figure you and the underwriter fix when the policy is written, and it is what a total loss pays. how agreed value differs from actual cash value. A recent sale price is the strongest evidence there is for setting it.

This is general information about how cover is arranged, not financial advice.

Twenty states, each checked against the agency that actually registers the boat, each row carrying its source and the date we verified it. A state that is absent has no verdict here rather than a permissive one.

This generator produces a document, not legal advice. Requirements change and vary by state and by country. Confirm with the agency that titles or registers your boat before you rely on it.