Buyers Agent?

[AquaGeo]

Hello All,

Has anyone had any good experiences with a buyers agent?
We were hoping to use an agent to save us multiple trips to France (and expense) to rule out any boats that present well on line but we cannot see ourselves.

Advice is always appreciated.

[Flibbertigibbet]

Buyers agent
When we decided to move to a bigger boat we knew what we were looking for and drove all up and down California looking at boats. One day I saw what looked like the perfect boat in Mexico and there were about 50 photographs on yacht world. between the pictures and the description it sounded perfect and the price seemed fair. After many emails and phone calls to the broker we arranged our airline tickets and motel, prepaid for a haul out and arranged for a surveyor to travel to the boat and paid his required 50% deposit. We flew to the closest airport and the broker had someone pick us up at the airport but we couldn't see the boat for two more days. Once we saw the boat it was a total disaster that neither the description or the pictures were an accurate representation of. we knew we wouldn't buy her before we ever stepped aboard. However we were stuck and couldn't get out of paying for the survey or the haul out. We had a lovely time in Mexico and came home about $4000 poorer. Soon after I read an old cruising world that had an article about using a buyer's broker. I called someone I knew in the business on Monday morning who represented us and helped with the purchase of our current boat. The article and the broker said the same thing "it doesn't cost the buyer anything as they get part of the commission from the seller and the sellers and brokers will lie to buyers but they typically won't lie to other brokers!"


around the bug that had an article on using a buyer's broker