by barin | Aug 18, 2010 | Blog |
Yes I know, the market is tough right now and everyone is having a hard time selling. Well, that’s not 100% accurate. There are many boats being sold right now of all sorts of sizes, ages and prices. In fact, boat sales this year have continued to exceed last year’s downturn. Now they might not all be selling for a premium :), but they are selling. So why is my boat still on the market? Assuming that you’ve listed your boat with a licensed broker and he’s placed ads in all the expected MLS sites here is the first of the top 5 reasons why your boat is not selling. Price This is the single most important aspect of a sale not just because it invites offers, but because it invites interest, period. Think about the buying process. If you were buying a small trailer or bass boat you would likely drive over to your local dealer and see what they have. If the prices are too high then at least now you know about the type of boat that you like and you go home to check internet sites like Ebay and Craiglist where these sort of boats abound. You punch in the size, model, years and range you feel would be a fair price. Results pop up and you go about selecting the ones you like eventually narrowing it down to a purchase. Buying a larger vessel is a bit more involved and geography plays a big part. Unless you live in South Florida, Seattle or Southern California where there are thousands of large boats to visit, your boat buying journey probably included planes, trains and automobiles. There’s no better way to learn about a lot of boat in a short period of time then attending a boat show, but those also require travel and have fixed dates. So what do people do the rest of the time to shop for boats? They go to the internet listing sites where hopefully they find you, right? This is where price takes center stage. The internet shopping experience for yachts is a self guided and often misguided approach. Amongst other things, MLS sites provide search forms that invite (force) buyers to choose size, year and price ranges. At this point two things will happen: The buyer has already done some shopping and figured out a price range that they feel is fair for the type of boat that they want. If you’re price range is too high or too low for what is reasonable to expect for your vessel (ie. what the rest of the market is being offered at), then your boat will likely get cut off from the results page and that buyer won’t even know you exist! You come up on the results page, but on the unreasonable high or low end. The likelihood is for that buyer to discard either extreme as either an irrational seller (high end) or there must be something wrong with the boat (low end). You can now understand what “pricing yourself out of the market” refers to. Clearly the lower the price the better your chances are of eventually selling, but it’s also quite possible to scare a prospective buyer away. The fact is that when we do find a boat that’s being sold dramatically below market value there’s usually a catch involved – short sale, bank repossession, damaged, etc…...