Here is a common story in the boat buying world. Buyer finds a boat on Yachtworld. Falls in love with the photos. Flies across the country to see it. Hires a surveyor. Pays $600–1,200. Survey comes back with $35,000 in issues. Deal falls apart. Two weeks of effort. $1,500 in travel and survey. Zero boat.
The mistake happened long before the survey. It happened at the listing stage. Survey is not step one. Survey is step four or five — after you have defined the right boat, filtered the listings, reviewed the serious candidates, and done a thorough virtual inspection to eliminate obvious problems.
Survey is the formal professional verification that happens after you have already decided this is the right boat type, in the right condition range, at a price that makes sense. If you are using survey to decide whether a boat is worth looking at, you are paying too early and too often.