I talked to a friend who owned a brokerage for 15 years. He says the best
by far method of buying is to give a written offer you want to pay
contingent on a survey and with a set time limit (10 days) and walk out the
door. No haggling, no b.s.
If the owner is anxious, he'll think it over a few days and either accept
or make a counter offer. If you get a counter offer, wait several days (make
him sweat) and either counter the counter or walk.
If it 's a slow time of year, the broker will often pressure the seller
just so he gets his commission,
Gordon

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 15:03:36 GMT, "Thomas Wentworth"
said:

Evan,,, for answering the phone and making a couple of calls? You are
going
to pay some jamooka $10,000?

Fer chrisakes, give it a little thought before posting such blather. It's
the nature of the business that the seller pays a commission on only the
sale that's made, and pays nothing on all of the showings, phone calls,
checking actual sales of comparables, etc. to people that don't ultimately
buy the boat. I know of very few boat brokers who are rich. And I'd guess
that if I divided the commission paid when I bought a boat by the number
of
hours various broker spent with me in the process of looking, that hourly
rate would look downright cheap. Same thing with real estate brokers.

I was remarking to my wife this morning that one reason people hate both
brokers and contingency fee lawyers is that they only see the amount of
the
fee on their particular case or purchase, and are blind to the efforts
that
result in nothing. (And BTW, I'm no fan of contingency fee lawyers, but
for
other reasons.)