wrote in message
oups.com...
The book does not dictate a price, but it can be an effective tool
while
negotiating.


**********

Nonsense. You might as well rely on saying "My brother-in-law says
your boat is only worth XXXX.

Put yourself in the seller's shoes. When the seller listed the boat, it
is very probable that he did some research on the local market that
included sales trends and selling prices for boats similar to the one
he is selling. To put yourself in the seller's shoes, imagine you put
your house up for sale and, rather than throwing a dart at sheet of
numbers on the wall, you priced the boat at or just slightly above the
prevailing price trend in your area.

Let's say that after you had your house listed for a week, an offer for
half price is presented by the broker. When you say, "That's almost an
insult! What makes this guy think he can buy
my house for so much less than my neighbors are selling their houses
for?"....how quickly would you cave in when the broker replied, "The
buyer went on the internet, found some site
where a group of Automobile Dealers has expressed an opinion about the
value of your boat, and as far as he's concerned that's all its worth"?

We actually *do* agree on one thing. Knowing the actual, recent, local
price tendencies for a boat can be an effective negotiating tactic.
This information is available, (I described how to obtain it earlier in
the thread), and useful. Using some fairy tale number from a
discredited source won't cause an informed seller to give his boat away
at half price. Ain't gonna happen.

Now of course if it were a political debate instead of a boating
transaction, the guy with the phony numbers would just keep repeating
them over, and over, and over again until everybody else began
believing they might be true. :-)


Chuck, what is your opinion of the BUC personalized evaluation/pricing
service?

http://www.buc.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=pes

We used it when we sold our boat and found it to be a good tool.

I haven't used BUC for a while.

BUC pricing was typically on the high side if one began using the
factors for "better than average" or "bristol" condition. What seller
doesn't believe that his boat is better than average, maybe even
bristol? Without using the multipliers, the pricing seemed fairly
realistic.

BUC makes an effort to identify obvious regional price trends, and
trends pertaining to specific types of boats. That's a good thing.

IMO, BUC is more often the "seller's book". (Surveyors typically used
BUC book valuations when appraising boats for charitable donation, as
the final number "adjusted for condition" was usually somewhat above
market).

BUC at one time was the defacto price and multi-listing program from
brokerages. They finally got their pricing up to some ridiculous
per-minute charge for being on line and Yachtworld has effectively
assumed the position. (Only a few years ago, Yachtworld was still under
$200 per month for a broker's subscription). However, now that
Yachtworld is charging almost $500 a month for brokers who use the full
extent of the service there is a lot of room for somebody to come in
and do a better job cheaper.

I still believe the best source of current regional sales information
is the sold boat database available to brokers on Yachtworld. You have
to look at the numbers carefully----- some brokers just routinely
report that every boat they sold was at full asking price........yeah,
right. Need some oceanfront property in Oklahoma? :-) {The majority
of brokers do report accurate selling prices}