Hi bb,

All my apologies if my posts offended you. They weren't targeted at you
nor at any other poster here. I actually value your post, even if my
opinion isn't relevant on this public thread where anything goes. You
have discussed the issue at hand: boat prices - not who's mother
doesn't like a certain poster, etc. It was the totally off topic posts
which ticked me off, especially as I read quite a few in a row. I'm
glad some are in short term mode and should automatically disappear
after x number of days at the poster's request. It will make such a
thread more coherent to anyone coming along later and interested in the
topic of boat prices.

I'm new here, and thus not at all accustomed to they way communiction
goes, especially when several members have scores to settle. All I
asked is for them to "step outside" to deal with conflicts unrelated to
this subject.

I happen to agree with you about the attitude of squeezing unfair deals
out of sellers as being at least as unacceptable as squeezing unfair
amounts of money from buyers for boats which are worn and torn. Fair
prices are important, in human terms. You state quite justly that
nobody deserves to get ripped off, whatever their role in a
transaction.

However, with market forces governing prices (regulated prices don't
really seem to work in some cases) what often tends to happen is an
excessive pendulum motion between supply and demand. When it is a
sellers market, sellers (and brokers) tend to try to get as high a
price as the market will bear, even if to an outsider it might seem
excessive. As long as someone is ready to pay, who is to complain?

This is the view of "Contractarian Ethics" in which a contract is the
only measure of what is right and wrong. However, when a contract
defies your own values by being too non conforming to what you hold to
be minimum standards, then you might be entitled to view the contract
as "wrong" or "unfair", even if each party directly involved agrees. To
make my point in an exagerated way, selling an inflatable mattress for
$10,000 to a very uneducated buyer could seem wrong to some people,
while to others, if the buyer is happy with his mattress, it is none of
anyone else's business.

In a buyer's market, when there are many boats for sale and few buyers
to be found, buyers may tend to try to wrench sellers to the ground
prying their boats out of their hands for pocket change. This, of
course similar to a seller's behavior in a seller's market. And the
same issue of responsible behavior towards others in a transaction is
at the heart of the problem.

What seems to be in question is:

- if the price is made between consenting parties, does that make it a
fair price? (we remember the widowed grandmother suckered into
practically giving away her regretted husband's boat)

- if it is a seller's market, is it plausible that (as many banks and
insurance agencies say today) most boats tend to be overpriced?

- if it is a buyer's market, is it plausible that we consider most
boats as being underpriced?

Boat prices seems to be tributary to many factors:

Technical constraints: presence of navigable waters, availablity of
fuel and fuel pricing, availability of disposable income to purchase
leisure craft, credit reserves and interest rates, size of the boat
park correlated to the number of potential purchasers, taxation,
storage and maintenance costs, etc.

Psychological and sociocultural factors: attractiveness of maritime
activities, attitude towards watersports, lifestyle associations with
specific types of boats, social status implications, object fascination
with boats, and not in the least affective emotional attachement to a
boat, etc.

In my earlier postings I was not trashing sellers or brokers. We can
all observe that totally free markets tend to obey the logic of
anything that the market will bear will be the market price - even if
excessively high or low. However, it is my own personal belief (with
which many will disagree) that when you are in a dominant market
position (as buyer or as seller) you have the instrinsic responsability
to temper the urge to make a killer deal at someone else's expense. If
boats are cheap? Make someone's day by paying the seller's asking price
without trying to chisel them. When boats are overpriced? Try to
advertise yours for what you think it is worth, and not for what
speculative sellers/brokers elsewhere are trying to bleed buyers.

If I seemed biased in my above posts, it is only because I believe that
the boat market is currently overpriced in general. You cannot say that
this is untrue when some boats which have already used up the best
decade in their lifespan are priced in quite used condition
uncomfortably close to their original new price. But does this means
that all sellers/brokers are exagerating prices? By no means. Some boat
models which may be slow movers are seemingly quite low priced even
today, so I would advise educated buyers to look at them carefully and,
if they check out, cut the seller some slack. Don't apply further
downward pressure.

Cheers,

Rich