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October 30, 2007
50th Anniversary Photos
The relative silence on www.platina.ca over the past couple of weeks has been exponentially correlated to the inverse relationship between party planning and brain band width. The weekend of festivities went off without so much as a hitch (or at least, nobody told me about the hitches if there were any). Here are a few photos from the celebrations here in New York for Chis' parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Elvis is clearly not dead, and very much smitten with Julianne!
Posted by dave at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2007
The Offer
The used boat market sucks for sellers right now and if they are feeling any sort of pinch from the credit squeeze, or the housing market, or the general malaise of the US economy, boats are the first things they sell. I mean, they need a place to live, and maybe they need a way to get to work, but really, if they are in any kind of pinch, they don’t need the boat.
And we are really not highly motivated, nor in any hurry to buy. Take that much money out of the market to buy a depreciating asset that will sit idle for the next five months? Nobody can convince me that this sounds like a smart plan.
So we asked ourselves how badly we wanted the Saga 43, and decided we wanted it at a certain price, but not above.
The boat had been listed for 290 for 6 months. The broker had just brought the price down to 275 about two weeks before we looked at it. He sent me a bunch of comparable sales, which suggested it should go for 245ish. We offered 200. The owner countered at 270. We decided not to respond.
The broker asked us to keep the offer alive and sign it back with a take-it-or-leave-it offer. We gave him a verbal offer of 225.
Two days later, he sent me an email to say that he had not shared our new offer with the owner, and tried to convince me that 250 was the right price. It may be the right price, and someone may actually pay it, but not us.
Several days later, and after a couple of phone calls during which I pushed the broker back, he sent me an email to say that there was some activity brewing around the boat, and if we wanted to do something, now was the time. This kind of sales tactic makes me highly suspect. I expect this in real estate, where there is a need factor. But not with boats.
I asked him to keep us posted on any offers he receives, but that we would wait until the spring. If this boat was no longer available, then it wasn’t meant to be.
I believe that the owner will become more motivated when he realizes that there is no activity. He knows that we’re sitting on the sidelines, and that we like his boat. It may fall into the hands of someone else, and that’s great because they are meant to have it more than we are.
There will be the right boat at the right price. The issue is no longer whether or not we get one. The questions is which one and at what price.
Posted by dave at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)