Bad experience with a yacht broker, appreciate some advice

[Fore and Aft]

Erikr something similar happened when I was surveying a boat last month. In the end the buyer dealt directly with the seller and I assume the broker got his commission. It was really awkward for everyone involved since we had no idea what was really happening on the day of the survey.
The short sea trial is annoying but it's a F24 so we know they sail ok and the owner showed you everything works. Usually a sea trial is not that long, remember everyone is a volunteer and only the surveyor is getting paid until you buy the boat. So a cruise around the bay is really not on the cards. Particularly if you're the 3rd or 4th potential buyer.
You can still buy the boat, just deal with the owner directly.
Cheers

[CarlF]

The broker didn't refuse to give you the post survey discount - the owner did.

Brokers just want a commission. Your discount wouldn't have made a significant difference in his commission.

While you're right that there's often a discount after the survey, there isn't always. Especially on an inexpensive boat like an F24, many owners would say "A deals a deal - you're welcome to get your deposit back but I'm not discounting more". How big a discount did you ask for? When I've sold boats I never gave a discount of more than a few percent after the survey because I carefully maintain my boasts. Any major probles get fixed quickly.

Or another possibility is that while you were doing your survey another buyer had come along who would pay more. Your discount demand gave the seller a way to get out of your deal and take the better offer. It seems a real possibility since the broker didn't even try to negotiate the discount down. Chalk it up to rookie mistake.

But you've hopefully learned a lesson. Buying a boat is a tough negotiation with three people (owner, broker, and buyer) all with different objectives. The one usually forgotten is the broker's objective -- which is to spend as little of his time as possible on the sale so he can earn commissions on other sales. He has a house mortgage to pay. Your thousand questions and issues made you a time wasting buyer for him.

So what do you do now?

1) if the boat's still on the market and you still like the boat -- go back and see if you can buy it for the undiscounted price. You've invested a lot of time and money into this boat. It's expensive to start all over again including paying for another survey - maybe more than the discount you were looking for. Sure, it means swallowing your pride to go back to the broker but negotiations often mean swallowing some pride.

2) Wait three months and if the boat's still on the market, there's a good chance the seller will accept your discounted offer as long as you don't make it hard.

3) Start over again. You might want to get a buyers broker. It doesn't cost you anything because the seller commission has to split his commission with the buyer broker. Warning: remember your broker is getting paid by the seller. It's a conflict of interest. Don't be too trusting or too open. When talking to him assume it will all get back to the seller's broker.

[eirikr]

Many thanks for taking time to read my post, I really appreciate all the feedback from the community.

I did have some expectations from the broker, but I also understood that the broker works for the seller and has no obligation to protect my interests. Having said that, I did expect the broker to do what I considered the minimum. For example, forward my message to the seller requesting additional information, e.g. model number of the equipment, receipt for the new outboard, etc. I already send the text message, the broker only need to forward the message from his phone. Nobody needs more than 10 sec to forward a message. If that's asking too much time from the broker, then I don't know what is reasonable. The broker already spend more then an hour showing the boat, is 10 sec forwarding a text message too much to ask?

When I put in my offer, I also texted the broker my subjects. All he needed to do is forward the subjects to the office staff so they can put them on the written offer. Again, I really, really don't see why that's asking too much time from the broker. Is the recent economy and recession lowered the standard to this level? So you just take it as is? Or speak out?

If those requests made me a time waster and pain in the arse, then... I have a feeling that if I want to sell a boat as a broker in the future, I can put on the listing:

Boat for sale
A boat, comes with motor, some equipment and, you know, stuff. As is.
Don't bother to ask the model or other details.
Don't bother with cash or bank draft or whatever.
Just deposit $x,xxx,xxx in bitcoin to xxxxxxx, and I promise a shinny new-to-you perfect-dream-boat will magically appear at the dock of your choice. I promise.
Have a good day.

Anyway....
The broker doesn't need to accept the listing, if the boat is low value or believe it's a waste of time with low commission. The brokage and broker is free to set a limit, say, I won't bother with boat less than $100K.

But he CHOOSE to accept the listing for a $35K boat. As a decent human being, with minimal business sense and ethic, sell the boat and provide a decent customer experience. At the minimum, the customer may leave a positive review on Google or something for future business and customer. I may continue to use his/her services in the future. If any sale person is so shortsighted, and still think he/she can get away with this kind of deceiving behavior or non-services in a small community like sailing community, then so be it. Again, it's a personal choice on how to behave themselves running a business. But IMHO no business can prosper with bad reputations in today's environment.

What do you think I am going to put on the Google review? My experience is backed by actual, written text messages, emails and phone logs. I can share my experience with screenshots and just let the community decides who to believe. I am keeping those evidence hoping Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms will protect my rights to speak out.

I am not afraid to speak out the truth, back by evidence. I am hoping by sharing my experience, the sailing and boating community can benefit, and weed out the bad apples.

"Speaking your truth means that you stay true to who you are, whether it's your feelings, opinions, or morals. Don't hide what you feel for the sake of someone's approval of you, it shouldn't work that way. Rather, you should stay true to your own opinions and voices, no matter what anyone else may think." ~ unknown

[JPA Cate]

Sure you get to speak your truth; no worries.

But what happens when the world is not congruent with your values is that you have thought you were being treated unfairly, and in a manner lacking in respect for you; whereas you just encountered a very average schleppy broker, something which is not uncommon. The broker just wants his/her cut of the deal. It is to his benefit for the buyer to pay more and not be just a "tire kicker".

When we were searching for our current boat, we visited a number of brokers, and had a number of experiences, ranging from being told to leave the office, what we were looking for didn't exist, to a very good one who showed us some of his boats, he knew weren't right, but we did it to hone his understanding, and he followed our search for months. The boat we found, in this case, belonged to a friend of a friend and was never handled by a broker at all.

Your journey through life with boats will be happier if you accept what you cannot change, without becoming angry about it. Your choice.

You can't weed out the bad apples. It is hard to find out who they are in advance, when you need to know. You can hone your broker selection skills. They almost all try to present themselves with a friendly, gregarious demeanor. They have a tendency to try and flatter you for the purpose of manipulation. It IS a sales job. [I actually thanked that guy who told us to leave, for not wasting our time! We had shown him a printed list of about 21 things we wanted. It's funny, reactions ranged from "I wish everyone thought out this carefully what they want" to being told to leave.

That said, if you really want that boat, expect to have to bend a little, like a boat heeling in the breeze. Deal with the owner. Get the boat and then go sailing like you want to.

Fair winds.

Ann

PS. It was Will Shakespeare who wrote, "To thine own self be true; thou canst not then be false to any man." It's from Polonius' advice to Laertes in Hamlet. (Sorry, don't remember which act and scene. But being true to yourself can have different faces at different times, and as you grow and change, and learn what works for you and what doesn't.

[Nikolina]

eirikr,
As soon as i started reading your post I knew the boat, owner and the broker. i was interested in the same boat early in July. The owner ran an ad in craigslist, when I replied he told me he was the owner and asked if I would contact the broker. I thought it odd that the owner was posting his boat for sale but I should contact the broker. Which I can understand now, if he had health issues. After several emails and phone messages to the broker I get a message back that he (the broker) is on vacation, fair enough. I left him a message would you please call me when you get back in the office, I'm interested in the boat. Nothing, no response three weeks later I make contact with the owner again as I would like to see the boat, I live in Washington so about 6 hours away. Sent emails and left messages and got nothing back! Zero, Nada, Nothing. In the mean time another F24 came up for sale in the Seattle area, the owner spent the whole day going over everything so that decision was easy.

I think we all understand that the broker works for the seller/owner, but this broker doesn't work at all. Simple communication is all it takes, return some emails, return some phone messages it's not hard. Be honest with the owner "we don't make any money on these smaller boats, you might be better off looking for someone else". I feel for the owner if he's locked into an agreement with these clowns.

Eirikr, As a side note I have a Stiletto 27 for sale, it's in Port McNeil. We competed in the Race to Alaska this year and that was as far as we got, just ran out of time. I plan on bringing it home in the next couple weeks. Good luck in your search.

[eirikr]

Lesson learned from this experience, as you guys pointed out that it's time to move on and be happy. Again, many thanks for all the replies, I really learned a lot from this community. Hopfully the next time I post my questions they will be sailing related, yay!

[cr180]

As others have said, sad state of affairs. Can personally attest that it is not only brokers, but Surveyors, so called expert repair techs, boat yards, and yes insurance agents. Have learned to distrust all.

By the way, welcome to the forum.

[Happ]

Originally Posted by CarlF

You have a common misunderstanding about brokers. Their income comes from commissions. The more sales (and bigger sales) they can make per week, the higher their income. It’s a business.

You don’t mention the price of the boat but I’m assuming it was not an expensive boat. For a boat worth less than $100,000 a broker is making a relatively small commission - so he can’t afford to spend a lot of time on the sale.

You were taking too much time on an inexpensive boat. A “time waster”. If you had been buying a $1 million boat you would have gotten more attention.

Note that the same is true for sellers. A boat that doesn’t sell quickly because it is priced too high gets less and less attention from the broker until the seller gives up and cuts price or switches brokers.

The commissioned broker system is often bad for both buyers and sellers - but it’s how almost all used boats are sold.

I’m actually surprised the broker spent as much time as he did with you.

I disagree with much you have said. First you are correct that the boat is under $100k. I had the same boat and it is around the $20 to $30k price range. Regardless the broker owes full service under his contract to the seller. That’s where the rub comes. As a buyer you can demand whatever you want in a contract. It is up to YOU to get your own Surveyor. It is up to YOU to get insurance. It is up to YOU to get a place for the boat. It is up to YOU to deal with the Surveyors Report and up to YOU to negotiate after the Surveyors Report. If YOU have issues with the boat it is up to YOU to accept or reject the final offer from the seller.

All in all you were expecting the broker to do a lot of things that are simply your responsibility. On the other hand if the broker is not going to act rand respond professionally that is the Seller’s problem. On the other hand if the sale is too small for the broker to respond accordingly he should never have taken the listing.

I recently read that Florida and California are a few of the states that require Licenses to act as a boat salesman. In fact they represent around 90% of all those licensed. I too have had a bad broker. I never went through with the sale. The boat did sell to another person a year later for around $10k less! Sometimes you just have to be prepared to walk away.

[CyKlop]

I think where you are making an unreasonable assumption is the part where you ask them to put something into the offer. That is not how it works. They have a listing. It is then up to you (or your buyer’s broker, which you didn’t have) to write up an offer and submit it to them.

If you want a change in the offer, then it is up to you to write up the new offer.

They then have the opportunity to accept, decline, or make a counter offer.

You then (in the case of declining or counter offer) can modify your offer or else walk away. To expect the buyer’s agent to be writing up your offers is actually unreasonable and, honestly, a little bit foolish since you are not in control of the content if the offer.

An offer does not, generally contain any verbiage about renegotiation. It simply contains verbiage that lets you walk away. I.e. verbiage such as, “Subject to qualified marine survey and sea trial.” It also should contain any other conditions such as expected inventory, moorage agreement or obtaining moorage and insurance, etc. it contain any “subject to” you want. It is up to seller to either agree with the conditions or not or counter offer. I mean, technically, you can put in, “subject to Thursday’s sunset showing a green flash”, to be silly about it. It’s all up to you.

After the survey, if there are things that show up, you then have the choice of continuing or walking. If you choose to walk, they have an option of discounting or offering some other form of remediation. Ditto with the sea trial.

Once you submit a proper offer, the broker has to forward it to the owner.

There are several good books about boat buying. I wish I had read them before buying my boat.

[GerryL]

We bought our boat this year, after carefully researching for 2.5 years. When we were ready to buy last summer, we narrowed down the boat style we were searching for, and the distance away it was. We met several brokers of varying performance, and also looked at a few offered by owner. Ultimately, the right boat for us was for sale by owner, no broker involved. We knew within 30 minutes of being aboard it was the one. We made an offer that day and wrote an agreement that the sale was dependent on getting a favorable survey and the ability to insure the boat as it was. Left him with a cash deposit and a handshake, and the rest was history. I can't believe 3 months have blown by in this Maine sailing adventure. We have absolutely no regrets. The boat search was frustrating though. And it is more difficult if you're new to it and you don't know what you don't know. Fortunately I learned a lot about the insurance woes of others by reading these forums. And about boats in general, as we were new to sailing and had sailed nothing bigger than 19'.

[rwaldrop13]

We started out trying to work with one of the biggest brokerages in the country. Along the way I had a nightmare experience with Curtis Stokes himself, resulting in me getting a Cease and Desist letter from his atty for posting about that particular experience, which I ignored based on advice from an attorney. The brokerage we were working with basically was showing us boats they had listed, and the broker on our side of the table was their regional manager for Florida from Tampa to Miami. On the first boat he showed us, he pulled their local person aside and asked her "have you set foot on this boat at all?" after I found over a foot of water in the bilge in the master, and both engine rooms because the owner's 'caretaker' had turned off the pumps to conserve battery. The generator 'didn't work', which turned out to be that the master breaker was tripped. The boat could not be plugged into the marina shore power because it was a 50amp, and the marina didn't have any open slips with that power. The second boat had black mold in the boat, having been in dry storage but shrink-wrapped with no fans/dehumidifiers set up. While driving home from telling the broker we were done with him, and his company, we got a call from an independent guy who remembered me, who referred us to a couple selling their boat but he was retired and out of the biz so he put us all together and wished us luck.

[Rockinar]

Its clear you dont know how the buying process works, you were tire kicking and wasting everyones time. You would not even put an offer in, but were making demands. Thats not how it works