I'm Ready to Buy the Boat, but How Do I Get a Broker to Take Me Seriously ?

[Richard Jordan]

We had a brokerage seminar for Yachtworld in Dec. '10, and they said something to the effect that 50% of the inquiries through their system are not responded to. First I did not believe it, and second I could not figure out how they could even know? Reading this discussion makes me wonder anew. I just do not see how anybody could not even give the courtesy of a response. No email or phone inquiry that passes into our box is not followed up to asap even if the answer is "sorry we cannot help you with that."

Agreed, there are good and bad brokers like any profession in life...give everyone a bad reputation...

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by jordanship

We had a brokerage seminar for Yachtworld in Dec. '10, and they said something to the effect that 50% of the inquiries through their system are not responded to. First I did not believe it, and second I could not figure out how they could even know? Reading this discussion makes me wonder anew. I just do not see how anybody could not even give the courtesy of a response. No email or phone inquiry that passes into our box is not followed up to asap even if the answer is "sorry we cannot help you with that."

Agreed, there are good and bad brokers like any profession in life...give everyone a bad reputation...

Over the past 3 years and 2 boat purchases I have recieved a response for EVERY email about a boat I have sent out. And the boats I have purchased were listed at $79 & $120k (isn't what I paid) so they weren't in the "get rich on commission" end of things, but did produce a good pay check for the amount of work involved.

I would say that there have been various degrees of differences on how the brokers wrote their response and you can tell a fair amount about them from this (like the ones that don't seem to know anything about the boat other than what's in the listing). Rich above was pretty good and if I was going to FL I would have used him to show me boats.


I still feel that unless you are looking at bottom of market boats there isn't anything to be lost by using a buyer broker. In fact if you hooked up with a broker that you trust then it is better to use them than dealing directly with a listing broker.