He’s been hunting for used-boat treasures since he was 8 years old.

That’s because starting when Jason Ruegg was about 4, he would travel with his father to various marinas as his dad looked for deals, getting excited when he came across a bargain.

“He’d keep each one for a year or two, and I’d always be the one finding his next deal or selling it for him since I was 8,” Ruegg said. “I was calling about boats for him, and people would, like, hang up the phone because they thought it
was a joke.”

These days, the Wilmington resident is essentially doing the same thing, but on a much bigger scale. Ruegg bought a former restaurant property at 6317 Market St. for $600,000 in June to relocate his growing used boat retail business, Off the Hook Yacht Sales, from a 600-square-foot office in Wrightsville Beach to a 6,200-square-foot building.

“There’s a lot more visibility here,” Ruegg said. “We can also park more of the boats here versus there where we only had two parking spots.”

A native of Annapolis, Maryland, where his father worked as a contractor and developer, and his mother was a stay-at-home mom, Ruegg graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2011 with a degree in accounting.

During his sophomore year at the university, he started flipping (reselling, not capsizing, that is) a boat or two each year.

“By my senior year, I had four or five boats at a time. Then I decided I no longer wanted to have a desk job anymore,” Ruegg said.

The 27-year-old has been able to expand his business in a short amount of time, partly because he’s made connections with brokers along the East Coast.

He said he can usually turn over between 15 and 20 boats a month, keeping some in Wilmington but also in various states along the Eastern seaboard, and usually has about 30 boats in stock.

Ruegg buys boats for cash and refurbishes them before reselling them. He also sells boats on consignment. Although he has 20 domain names involving the term “cash for boats,” his main websites are webuyboats.org and offthehookyachts.com.

He said he believes demand is increasing for used boats because those who want to become boat owners or buy a different vessel can pay half the price for a boat that’s a few years old than they would for a new one.

It helps, he said, that boat dealers want to liquidate trades as soon as possible. Used boats aren’t often sold as quickly as used cars, he said.

“We do price them right, so they do sell quick, just not as quick as a car,” Ruegg said.

But the pace is fast enough for Ruegg to be considering future expansion plans.

“From here, I hope we can kind of get this place set up and open more locations in different states up and down the coast,” Ruegg said.

About six months ago, Jason’s father, Dan Ruegg, checked out his son’s boat websites for the first time.

“I was so amazed by all the boats he had for sale, it kind of floored me. I didn’t even realize how much he had grown his business,” Dan Ruegg said. “He’s just very motivated and very skillful at putting deals together.”

A lifelong boat enthusiast himself, Dan Ruegg said he believes his son’s work ethic is one of the things that helps him compete in a challenging business.

“He never stops working,” Jason’s father said. “When he comes to visit, he’s on the phone at 11 o’clock at night talking to clients, but that’s what it takes to build something up like that.”

In early September, Jason Ruegg, whose old office was at 10 Marina St. in Wrightsville Beach before he sold it in July, was in the process of upfitting his new location on Market Street. The building had previously been home to one restaurant after another before sitting vacant for more than a year.

“I think that will be a real positive change for it,” said Mike Nadeau, president of Wilmington-based Creative Commercial Properties.

Nadeau represented the seller, Horisons Development LLC, in the transaction with Ruegg.

“It’s been obviously challenging for restaurants there, and to me, I look at that stretch of Market Street with the absolutely astounding amount of money that changes hands there with all those car dealers – it’s really a very well-established, major-item retail market there,” Nadeau said.

Ruegg said recently that he hopes to have all of the renovations done at 6317 Market St. by mid-November. He’s subleasing part of the space to a marine financing company, Trident Funding. But Trident customers who come to the company’s office in Ruegg’s building don’t have to buy a boat from Off the Hook.

In general, boat dealers seem to be optimistic about sales this year after getting good results in 2014, according to an article on the website of Boating Industry magazine.

In the publication’s annual survey, 73 percent of the dealers who participated said they expected their revenue to grow in 2015, with 44 percent predicting a 10 percent increase from last year, the article said.

Ruegg said he expects to be successful in his new location. While he does buy and sell locally, he said he believes being on Market Street will help him do more business in the Wilmington area.

“We’re trying to reach out to the local market as much as we can, and now I think it will help that we’re right on Market Street,” Ruegg said.

Nadeau said he, too, predicts Ruegg will be in it for the long haul on Market Street.

“With the restaurant business, it’s kind of characterized by potentially short-lived uses,” Nadeau said. “I think he’ll be able to go in there and make that work for many years.”