Buying a boat from a broker without a buyer’s agent is the same as buying a house with no realtor representing you. And doing so from long distance, stacks the deck even further against you. The seller’s agent is looking out for the seller and themselves. Period. Since that agent gets commission based upon the selling price of the boat, why would they negotiate for a cheaper price on your behalf? And generally, if you have your own broker, the commission paid to the buyers broker is often a portion of the fees collected by the agent listing the boat.
To the topic of knowledgeable brokers and surveyors, I think that most brokers tend to follow the money trail and focus their energy and expertise on what will yield the greatest return for them and their company. Many yacht brokers are passing up listings of 30-40 year old sailboats because demand is low, the potential buyers are cheapskates (yes, that includes us!) and the time and money it takes to list an old “fixer upper” may result in the broker being upside down in recovering their costs. If they take on an older boat, they’d prefer to list the 40 year old Hinckley or Morris Yacht that still sells for over $100K, which means their commission actually amounts to some return for the effort. This is why you see more and more cheap boats being represented by “discount” online brokers like POP Yachts, where the virtual brokerage is located in Florida and their “regional” sales agent collects photos from the owner and shows the boat to clients. This person may have 50-100 boats listed and may never have first-hand knowledge of any of them. From experience, the regional guy is not usually a sailor and he may have inherited the listing from a prior broker who may no longer be with the company. When I purchased Half Magic last winter, I was fortunate that my surveyor, Mike Collier from Marine Safety in Fairhaven, MA, is also a C&C Landfall 38 owner and was very excited to run a fine tooth comb over my purchase. I scheduled the survey to be performed when I could be there too. Even so, we surveyed in January with the boat out of the water and we missed a few things. First off, the boat had no operational batteries, so we had to hook up the electrics to a temporary battery to see if everything worked. Items like the refrigeration compressor “turned on” but I was later to find out that the refrigerant charge wasn’t sufficient to cool down the icebox during the summer. How do you determine that in January when EVERYTHING was cold and freezing? It was difficult, but we managed to run the engine on auxiliary fuel and water. Despite draining the fuel cell after purchase, I discovered substantial residue in the fuel tank from the boat sitting for such a long time on the hard, resulting in a few clogged filters at some very inopportune times during the course of the summer. There are certainly times I wish for the simplicity of my previous 25Mk 1 with very little interior plumbing, a simple outboard motor, and no electronics to go haywire. I’ve also heard of some folks getting two surveys on a boat purchase, one very thorough survey to be as informed as possible and the other as a more “general” survey that can be submitted to an insurance company to allow an older boat to be insured if there may some problems that the owner wants to fix on his own but perhaps not right away. Be wary of boats that have been listed for many months and are now listed at significantly reduced price. Those are the boats that were initially priced well if they were in good shape, but problems came up and the broker or owner didn’t want to go the expense of fixing the problem. To think that you can fix those problems cheaper than the original owner or a yard that is able to buy parts and labor at wholesale, may be a bit of a pipedream. Chuck Gilchrest S/V Half Magic 1983 35 Landfall This list is supported by the generous donations of our members. If you wish to make a contribution to offset our costs, please go to: https://www.paypal.me/stumurray All Contributions are greatly appreciated!
_______________________________________________ This list is supported by the generous donations of our members. If you wish to make a contribution to offset our costs, please go to: https://www.paypal.me/stumurray All Contributions are greatly appreciated!
