Greetings,
I am in the process of
purchasing my first
boat and having been a real estate
broker in several US states over a ten year period I can’t help but compare and contrast the apparent differences between
buying a house and
buying a boat although the amount of
money at stake is equally substantial.
While dual agency obviously exists in real estate as well, there are some rather clear advantages to having a buyer’s agent with ONLY your interests in mind, yet this practice appears to be rare in the
boat industry, at least from the limited
google research I’ve done.
I see one major reason why this could be; geographic location. In real estate, I can hire a local agent with intimate knowledge of the area and the properties
for sale within it. That agent could tour the property, conduct a comparative market analysis based on it’s location, condition, and features, and effectively advise me throughout the negotiation procedures. With boats, however, the search is world wide. My agent would likely never personally see the vessel and be severely lacking in knowledge of local procedures and issues that could affect the
sale.
Do 99% of boat buyers simply contact the agent representing each boat they may be interested in and hope they will act as an honest
broker with both parties interests in mind? If they do anything other than sell me on the boat I contacted them about, aren’t they doing their seller a disservice AND losing a commission as they will probably not be representing me (the buyer) or the seller in the eventual transaction?
To make this even more difficult, boat brokers seem to have a higher degree of anonymity than real estate brokers. I haven’t found the zillow.com equivalent where I can simply search a broker’s name and get a plethora of
reviews and stories of exactly how agent X went out of their way to make it a smooth transaction or how agent Y became impossible to reach and lied every step of the way to steer them toward a
purchase that wasn’t in their best interest.
So what’s the answer? Do I go with the seller’s agent, and where do I go to ensure they are likely to keep my interests in mind? If I want a buyer’s agent, do I get one in each geographic area or should broker’s be familiar enough with the global market to assist me anywhere my dream boat may be waiting?