On Mar 13, 5:32�am, "JimH" wrote:
"Eisboch" wrote in message

. ..



I haven't followed this thread, but I am wondering why NADA is used.
Years ago I bought the BUC *books and, if I recall correctly, their boat
value estimates are based on actual sales by region and by condition.

Eisboch

I agree. *And your local library probably carries the last years edition.
They also offer an appraisal service for a fee.

BUC is a little better than NADA.

In the last 10 years or so they have lost most access to the data that
once made them pretty reliable.

At one time, the customary data exchange and multiple listing service
for yacht brokers was called BUC.net. It was a pretty sweet deal for
BUC. When you logged on to check regional inventory, etc, you paid
something like $1 a minute to use the service. A busy brokerage office
might run up a bill of $20-$30 a day! Along came Yachtworld with the
broker's-only password protected side, Boatwizard that offered better
service for something under $200 a month when they first began.
(Yachtworld is now several hundred per month- maybe leaving the door
open for the next better mousetrap?). Most of the brokers got out of
BUC.net within a couple of years, and the service lost its data.

BUC does send out sheets to yacht brokers and asks them to report on
the
boats they have sold. There's not much incentive to do that, and it
probably gets put into the "when I get a round tuit" file much of the
time.

A word of caution on BUC. The regional differences are fixed
percentages that are supposed to apply across the board. Doesn't work
that smoothly in real life.
IIRC, there was a 15% add-on for boats in the Pacific NW. Boats do
sell for more money here than elsewhere as there is a lot of
opportunity to use them and the lack of intense sunlight for most of
the year keeps UV degradation to a minimum. That said, a good clean
trawler here will often bring 25% more than the "national average" for
the same vessel, while a picnic or lobster boat that would be very
popular on the East Coast probably will need to be heavily discounted
to sell at all......(exception seems to be the Grand Banks Eastbay
series).

Another tripping point with BUC is the "condition" tables. Everybody
always overestimtes the condition of their boat when they are selling,
and everybody always expects a *lot*, conditionwise, when buying. Far
too many sellers with a decently clean boat, (in the same shape that
most people who cared about their boat would keep it), add on for
"Bristol" condition when using BUC. Conversely, the typical buyer
looks for a reason to offer less and will try to bluff the seller by
stating that he only considers what might be the cleanest boat in the
world "average".

The dance of the buyer and seller goes on, and on, and on. :-)