Steel, wood or aluminum

First of all, thanks for letting me join. I am a member of the Trawlerforum and another member in that forum suggested I ask my question as well on this forum, where there are apparently more owners of boats made out of steel, wood or aluminum

Currently I have a Defever 49, we sail in the Med and I am looking for a larger boat (up to 70'). I would like to have a boat that can cruise at around 9 - 10 kts and go even faster if possible, so that we can outrun extreme weather when it shows up. With our Defever we cannot do that, 7 kts is about the max we will get.
Also we would like to have more space onboard, we more or less live on our boat, so we can use extra storage space, but also extra space for guests.

I am searching online for boats and I have found a couple of boats that might be interesting, however I am not familiar with the pros and cons of the different hull constructions. One boat is made of steel, one is made of wood and the third one is aluminum.
They are all older boats, 1990, 1997 and 2001 and I know steel does rust, aluminum apparently can just desintegrate and wood I have absolutely no clue about. I have not yet seen the boat, so I don't know if it is wood with epoxy on top of it or if it is painted bare wood.
Some people have already told me to stay away from wood, but others said it should not be a problem if taken well care of.

If any of you owns an older steel, aluminum or wooden boat, I would gladly like to hear your insights, the problems you encounter, if it is very maintenance intensive (more than GRP), any tricks to find out if the boat is in good condition etc.

Appreciate your insights

Was this a pure wooden boat or did it have a layer of epoxy or paint on top of it ? I have been trying to find out how the boat, that I found, is constructed. I know that it is all wood, but I don't know if the boat was treated with epoxy or fiberglass afterwards. I e-mailed the yard, but they have not replied yet. This boat had a complete refit in 2018 / 2019 where the boat was completely stripped and repaired what needed to be repaired. Boat was built in 1990.

Thanks for reacting, could you give an insight in the type of problems these boats had ? Was it woord rotting or epoxy delaminating etc ?

Problem is that what I am looking for is not for sale in the Med. I currently have a trawler, would preferably have something similar back, but there aren't a lot of larger trawlers around in the Med and if there are they have pricetags of well over 1 million euro. That is a bit over the budget I have and on top of that I would still need to spend about 200.000 euro on solar, LiFePO4, zero speed stabilization and navigation equipment. Most of these boats have older equipment for which updates are no longer available.
That is how I ended up with these three boats, where the aluminum one is the most in line with what I have now, but it is 10' shorter than the other two. And one of the reasons for getting a different boat is that we would like to have more space onboard.

Thanks for replying.
The problem is that I don't know what these boats require in special treatment or maintenance. I can understand the outside of the hull, but I have no knowledge of adverse metals that have an influence on an aluminum boat. I understand there is something with stray electricity, but exactly how I should find that, what to do against it, that is what I am trying to find out.
I thought aluminum could not corrode, but now I understand it can actually desintegrate quite quickly.
I know that Gus (In Too Deep) has an aluminum Broward and that one still seems to be going strong after all these years, but his knowledge is far above mine. I think I will need to have a good understanding of what aluminum boats are all about, but where can I find that info ? That is the question.

Thanks for your reply.
Does the replacing of hull fasteners also apply to wooded boats that have a epoxy layer on top of the wood on the outside of the hull ? I don't see myself changing thousands of screws every few years.

Nice, but we live onboard and travel all year on the boat with 3 medium to large dogs, we have 2 cabins, one of them is for storage, which means we cannot have any guests without moving all the 'stuff' in our cabin. That means climbing over boxes, dog food, covers etc.

If we would not live onboard, but just spend about 1 month on the boat we would not have this 'luxury problem'.
In addition we need some more speed to be able to outrun extreme weather which is getting more and more a problem in the Med.

Thanks for your detailed explanation. This is some valuable information that I would have never figured out myself and I guess you won't find it in any of the books describing aluminum boats.