x-no-archive:yes



"Kathy Mumma" wrote:

We are just researching now and planning to buy next winter. But your post
brings up a question I have, if you don't mind.
Does the group think it is better/cheaper to buy from an owner privately; or
a broker? It seems the broker prices are more inflated and the boats carry

A lot of times an owner will try to sell privately, be unsuccessful,
and then list it with a broker with the broker's commission added to
the sale price. So if you were sure that you wanted a particular type
of boat and could find one that was not yet listed with a broker (for
instance I keep a list of CSYs for sale and the owners often list them
with our group before they go to a broker), then it might be cheaper
to buy one that way.

You can look at BoatTrader where owners can list their own boats.
YachtWorld listings are of course all with brokers.

less equipment. Some seem stripped actually.
The privately owned boats better equipped?

I don't think the amount of equipment is the result of being listed
with a broker.

I realize this is subjective of course. I imagine many will buy "up" to
larger boats and move equipment.
This will be first boat so this will be a large factor.

We were lucky in that we got a boat which had very little on it in the
way of equipment. A LORAN which we've never used, an old VHF radio,
an AM/FM radio with speakers in the cockpit, and that was about it.
Not even a GPS. So we could get the equipment that we wanted that was
up to date as of when we bought it. We missed getting a boat that we
chartered and loved which had all the toys, but they were 5 years or
so old. (We missed it because we didn't know that it was on the
market.)

We had bad luck with several brokers - we spent some time in the Miami
Ft Lauderdale area with one broker looking at boats and asked him to
let us know if any of the kind we wanted became available, and one
did, and he didn't let us know. OTOH, one of the brokers up here
called us as soon as one came on the market up here, and we bought
that boat.

One thing about working with a broker - if the seller is suffering
second thoughts, he's less likely to yank the boat if he has to pay
the broker's commission anyway. We looked at several boats which the
seller wasn't really committed to selling. And I know of one boat
being sold privately where two separate parties made a full price
offer and the owners then raised the price. That boat also had a
bunch of equipment on it which didn't go with the sale.



grandma Rosalie