Back and forth

Off again, on again, off again…

We’re losing patience with the IF41 in Marina del Rey.  After receiving our offer the sleazy selling broker called Mr. Broker to tell him he thinks his client’s bottom line is $45,000 and that he’s showing the boat to some other prospective buyers today.  Mr. Broker told him to present our offer as is.  Mr. Broker is also thinking he might present our offer to the seller’s other broker.  That’s right, the seller has two brokers.  The one we’ve been dealing with is a jackass.  When Rich viewed the boat the guy didn’t have the right keys because the seller had changed the locks and listed the boat with another broker without telling him.  Then the broker took Rich to two different Hunter’s.  Rich obliged him and briefly looked around, but made it clear he wanted to see the IF41.  After the broker went to the competing brokers office to get the right keys Rich finally got on the boat.  After about an hour the broker was throwing out hints that he’d looked at everything and it was time to go.  Rich didn’t like this guy from the get go.

Wait, it gets better.  When we were ready to make an official offer we find out that there was another interested buyer with an offer on the table.  When that deal fell through, the guy calls Mr. Broker and tells him there may be “a window of opportunity” and would we like to modify our offer.  Why would we modify our offer when the seller hadn’t even responded to it?  Come to find out the offer that fell through was for $30,000 and the owner would carry $15,000.  The seller turned it down.  Based on this information I think our offer of $42,000 cash was spot on.  Plus when you add the cost for the survey, haul out, sales tax, delivery to Sacramento, plus anything that needs to be done before it can make the trip up here, we’re looking at $50,000 or more.

So where do we stand now?  We told Mr. Broker that if the seller wouldn’t budge on $45,000 that we would take it if they carried the paper for $10,000.  Now I’m wondering if we want to deal with this seller.  If we agree to $45,000 then we have the haul-out, survey, and sea trial and the surveyor finds some problems, the standard procedure is to renegotiate the price to account for the problems the surveyor found.

If this seller won’t budge on the price now, he might not be willing to renegotiate after the survey and we’d be out all the money and time if we decide to walk away.  Plus, after forking over the survey and haul out money I’d feel a little obligated to see it through so it wouldn’t be a complete waste, but I’d be bitter about it.  In the long run it might not be worth it.  I’m interested to see if these other “prospective buyers“ are serious or if they exist at all.

There are plenty of boats on the market in our price range; this boat is not the only game in town.   There are some nice CT Ketches on the market.  One in particular looks really good in San Diego.  I’m ready for another road trip anyway.

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