Determine How Long a Boat Has Been Listed

[dave777]

Is there anyway to determine how long a yachtworld listing has been up? What about when a seller switches brokers?

[DeepFrz]

I don't know but there are a few I have been following with interest that have been listed for at least 5 years.

[Ironhorse74]

A subscriber (broker) to yachtworld can tell. One way of getting the real scoop is to use a buyers broker from a different brokerage. Well maybe.....

[VirtualVagabond]

Anyone know what it costs to subscribe?
Also gives access to Soldboats.com, which could be well worth the fee for a year to see what boats are actually selling for and give a bit of bite your negotiations...

[minaret]

It's expensive. But it could be worth it to the right person. A surveyor I hired used Soldboats to find out the boat I was looking at was sold last at 25k less than they were asking, with no improvements made. It was a great bargaining piece to go to the owner and broker and say "I know you paid X for it so why are you asking Y when no improvements have been made and it's a down economy?". Every boat has a history and Soldboats can often tell you much about a boat....

[dave777]

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

Anyone know what it costs to subscribe?
Also gives access to Soldboats.com, which could be well worth the fee for a year to see what boats are actually selling for and give a bit of bite your negotiations...

Soldboats.com does NOT display prices 'boats are actually selling for'.

Soldboats is connected with yachtworld, and the last asking price at the time of sale gets reported as the 'sold' price. There is nothing which requires any broker to edit a listing to mark the price lower, and there is every incentive to leave it. Like for example if the pending sale falls through. Read their disclaimers, or try matching the actual selling price of a sale you know first hand with the yachtworld version, which you can still look up with the listing ID. Historically it was different, like at the heights of the housing / credit bubbles then Soldboat prices, and yachtworld asking prices for that matter, were likely pretty close to actual selling prices. Times have changed. But it's still useful to see asking prices.

Knowing how long a boat has been for sale is also useful. If the price hasn't dropped dramatically on an old listing, the marketplace says its overpriced, can save a lot of travel time. And how can we determine if a boat gets relisted? They do that with houses a lot, but if you log into some sites you can see all listings. I'm guess there aren't any similar buyer protections for the boat market.

Hi DeepFrz - curious, how much has the asking price changed over the last five years? Wish I sold all my fancy stuff 5 years ago and bought gold, could buy it all back at a fraction of the cost and still have a pile of gold left over.

Minaret - it could be even worse. The previous owner may have paid even less than the Soldboats listing. You just don't know. But what happens a lot is owners have a feeling for the total amount they spend to insure, maintenance, haul, store, repair, replace things. They don't always understand those moneys are gone, spent, and didn't increase the boats value. Those expenditures help slow the depreciation, but they don't stop it. And they certainly don't create price appreciation.

[Tom1340]

Dave,
I understand that brokers are expected to report actual sales price back to yacht world. I recently obtained sold boat data on a pacific seacraft, which indicated a sale price notably lower than the last listed asking price. I then contacted the new owner who confirmed the reported sales price was the actual price he paid.

Some (many?) brokers may not report actual sales price, in which case sold boat may use the last listed price, as you suggest. But my one experience indicates that at least some of the 'as sold' prices are real.

[dave777]

Originally Posted by Tom1340

Dave,
I understand that brokers are expected to report actual sales price back to yacht world. I recently obtained sold boat data on a pacific seacraft, which indicated a sale price notably lower than the last listed asking price. I then contacted the new owner who confirmed the reported sales price was the actual price he paid.

Some (many?) brokers may not report actual sales price, in which case sold boat may use the last listed price, as you suggest. But my one experience indicates that at least some of the 'as sold' prices are real.

Most viewers of Yachtworld pricing, or soldboat.com, don't have access to the new owner. Suffice it to say, that the amount listed isn't always true, and I think many brokers will eventually acknowledge it happens. Agreed, some of the 'sold' prices are true. I'm guessing that in today's rough market, there is more 'play' than in the past.

If this was a securities market, or the housing market, there would be legal consequences to reporting errors. For whatever reasons, the boat market is not transparent.

But there is another issue in comparing apples to apples if looking at broker vs. private sales. Soldboat reports boats sold by brokers, and 'selection bias' would tend to show a higher average value, all else being equal. Plus, there is the commission which increases the sales price compared with a private sale, all else being equal. Another thing which skews the soldboat pricing, sometimes if a sale is "too low" they will just "not report it". I've heard that from a broker. How can you not report a sale if you are at least pretending to depict market values?

There are certainly bigger problems in the country, like with housing appraisals being bogus, faked student testing by school districts, bogus social security financials and so forth. Just that buyers should be prepared to take some things with a grain of salt. If the market value of a boat is x, it would have sold at x in a reasonable period of time.

Thanks for sharing. Pacific Seacraft - great looking boats. Never sailed one but would rather be on one in rough weather than many others.

[Cheechako]

one way is to google under the model of boat then look at locations. often you can see the old listings and the old asking prices.... usually a good history of coming down, and down and down.....

[dave777]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

one way is to google under the model of boat then look at locations. often you can see the old listings and the old asking prices.... usually a good history of coming down, and down and down.....

For some reason, I can't find old yachtworld listings with google. If I type 'pacific seacract 34' i'll get lots of hits, but not linking to old yachtworld listings. I thought yachtworld used to show us a 'last modified 1/1/2010' line like that, and maybe even when the listing started. Can a broker see the date a listing began? And what about when a listing is closed, then relisted, sometimes with a new broker?

[Sand crab]

I started a similar thread a while back asking if there is a code to deciphering the Yachtworld ID numbers. The consensus was "no". BTW, I think it is the (good) listing brokers that update their listings. I've also noticed listings for sold boats. BOB

[Cheechako]

the brokers may have gotten smart about it deleting old posts somehow? Last I bought was a couple of years ago and the deeper I searched on google, I found a listing for the boat I bought 3 times, with decreasing prices...

[terminalcitygrl]

I've seen sold boat lists now for a number of different boats and have noted that every time the lists (which are only sent for the last 2-3 years, a bias in itself) shows boats selling generally $5k less than the list price. Overwhelmingly. There may be one or two that sell for a bit more or less but $5k is clearly the target -I just can't see that being a coincidence. Also the details are never sent - the condition of the boat and equipment should have a significant impact on sales prices which makes the $5k differential even more suspect IMHO.