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.