Going to try selling - concerns

wredman

wredman

New Member
Apr 2, 2007
36
Missouri - LOT)
Boat Info
300da - 2003
Engines
350mag
First of course, is, how bad is the market, now that spring is here, does anyone have a better outlook for this years market than they had predicted it would be last fall.

Selling details, concerns for scams and fraud with Money orders etc. This is something that I am worried about that is making me want to use a broker. Hopefully, they would be more familiar with the process. I have a documented boat - how does that impact the transaction?

Scams with advertising locations - specifically craigslist. Or, are others such as boat trader more insulated from that. I am thinking about setting up a new sacrificial email account for this.
 
I did not have any problems with selling my AJ. It was only fro sale for a week before I had it sold. I had it on CL and the classified section of Ebay. A local guy ended up buying it. First one there with the money, gets it. I accepted nothing but a cashiers check and held the boat until it cleared. If it's someone out of area or if they want someo ther type of payment other then cash, cashiers check or bank transfer, forget it. Walk away.

The market is still a heavy buyers market. Yes I made money on my boat, but then it was worth more then I owed. Yes, Ialso took a big beating on it compared to what it would have gone for 2 years ago. (but in the end, I still made a little $$). Be prepared to NOT make a lot of $$$ on it.

A broker will charge upwards of 10%. This may or may not put it out of range for a potential buyer...... Or it may cut into what you need for it.
 
Sorry you have to sell. The scams are easy to weed out - no money orders especially for more than the stated amount. No shipping to Nigeria..... I'd recommend a sacrificial email address and use a format for email and phone numbers (on Craigslist) which can't be automatically used. blah at blah.com works and most people know to replace the spaces and the 'at' with '@'. The phone number format most people seem to use is to spell out a few numbers - like two5two-5five5-1two3four.

For the documentation item - I believe you only need to have it transferred - http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/nvdc/nvdcinstr.asp

Good luck.
 
IMO, dont go the broker route and try the private sale. Most of us looking in your price range already understand we will need a survey and such and dont want to pay the taxes or the commission. Keep it for yourself and save us buyer the tax!!

There are soooooo few private sale cruisers out there and it does not appear hard as far as paperwork to do. I think your boat would go faster on Craigslist and Boat Trader if it was a private sale. That is about all I have been looking for to save 7K in taxes minimum!

I just sold my 220 and although I know it is small I generated a lot of traffic just with Craigslist and Boat Traders Free ad.
You will get the trash and spam, so my philosophy was cash only or we meet at your bank and they certify the check and then hand me the cash. Not after running it through any of my accounts.

From what I have seen boat shopping it seems like a great time to sell a cruiser. ESPECIALLY a well cared for cruiser!:thumbsup::lol::thumbsup:

Thats like finding BIGFOOT! lol
 
Bill....I would try it myself first. As I recall your boat is at LOTO. I have my boat listed on Boatcrazy.com. I have have mainly only had "tire-kickers" inquiring about it. I have not put it on Craigslist yet. I sold a vehicle last fall on Craigslist and I got so much junk email from it. It may be a good idea to set up another email account.

Do you still have your Baha? Good luck with whatever you decide.....
 
I looked at a few of the online forsale sites for a rough average of asking prices, and these are not in line with NADA at all for a 2003 300da. I talked to a broker and he wanted to rely heavily on the NADA. My wife says to keep it rather than give it to the bottom feeders who may be the only purchasers right now - and where NADA is gathering sales data. I am going to talk to the dealer soon, but most likely will keep the boat another season, hopefully the bottom doesnt keep on falling.
 
Talk to a few more brokers. Get some SOLD data on your boat from the broker, that will tell you where they are selling at.
 
Redhook98 said:
I did not have any problems with selling my AJ. It was only fro sale for a week before I had it sold. I had it on CL and the classified section of Ebay. A local guy ended up buying it. First one there with the money, gets it. I accepted nothing but a cashiers check and held the boat until it cleared. If it's someone out of area or if they want someo ther type of payment other then cash, cashiers check or bank transfer, forget it. Walk away.

The market is still a heavy buyers market. Yes I made money on my boat, but then it was worth more then I owed. Yes, Ialso took a big beating on it compared to what it would have gone for 2 years ago. (but in the end, I still made a little $$). Be prepared to NOT make a lot of $$$ on it.

A broker will charge upwards of 10%. This may or may not put it out of range for a potential buyer...... Or it may cut into what you need for it.
Click to expand...
What year was your AJ? How long did you own it? I'm suprised to hear you made money, especially in the crappy market of the last couple years. To sell a boat for more than you paid for it certainly isn't the experience most boat owners have.
 
The cost of selling a boat is inversely proportional to the amount of crap you have to put up with to get her sold.

The lower your cost for selling and advertising means that you are going to have to personally deal with the nut-cases, the idiots, the deadbeats with boat fever and no money, the bad credit buyers, the fools who can't tell time and call you at 1AM, the guys who think they want a boat but cannot make a decision if their lives depended on it and the guys who talk a good game, but who do not wear the pants in their family. Even though you really want to tell the guy on the phone to get lost, you have to handle every single one of them with professionalism and courtesy because you never know who is going to be the guy with cash in his pocket.

With a broker, you establish the ground rules with your listing agreement and you never are involved until a prospect is qualified by the broker. Rarely does the broker's commission cost the seller any real money. The broker knows his market, has an advertising budget, usually has co-broker relationships already established and will normally get more for the boat than you will with a FSBO.

There is a lot more that goes into this equation than the broker's commission. If you are up for dealing with the b.s. and the added risk, then go for it.
 
Well put, Frank.

Even though the boat is at my house- and I obviously don't need a broker to show it- I decided after a couple of months of FSBO to turn it over to a broker.
 
I was in the local SeaRay dealership over the weekend. The guy at the parts counter said the used boat market was booming. That they were moving used boats as fast as they got them in.
 
scott young said:
I was in the local SeaRay dealership over the weekend. The guy at the parts counter said the used boat market was booming. That they were moving used boats as fast as they got them in.
Click to expand...

I was at my local Marine Max dealer this past weekend and they had LOTS of people shopping used boats as opposed to new.
 
Sold my 23' Maxum cuddy with trailer for the same price that I paid for it last year in a week.

I was really nervous about having two boat payments but I was told by the dealers in area we wouldn't have a problem selling it.

Not a lot of good used boats in the midwest and the ones that are clean sell pretty fast. We just advertised on Craigslist and refreshed the add the every day.

Good luck!
 
So I am a buyer in this market. Pre-approved with bank check in hand. We've looked at one 2001 270DA before we decided the additional price for 2001-up 280DA's was well worth the jump.

We've looked at two 280DA's. One was sold immediately after we looked at it. The other we made an offer on, but it was not accepted. We're still looking...

However, we'd prefer to work with private owners. Of the three, two have been brokers. Both were pretty nice, but the one just gave us this bad feeling...we didn't particularly like nor trust him. Granted he's working for the seller, but still. The private seller was very nice and obviously knew more about the boat than the brokers...I knew more about the boats I was looking at than either of the brokers.

In any case, the one broker mentioned that he and a lot of others use soldboats.com to get his resale value. Since you need an account to use that website, we used NADA to get the value of the boat we saw.
 
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