Boat broker commissions in the US - are they next after real estate?

[Networker]

I am happy to use brokers, but they don’t seem very helpful. This isn’t 2020-2021, so there’s aren’t more buyers than boats anymore, but the opposite. Yet the brokers I dealt with were unwilling to acknowledge this, to the point they refuse to even negotiate off asking price!

Not only did I find asking prices unrealistic, which we’re just based off soldboat.com data, the fact they wouldn’t even pass an offer to the owner that wasn’t at list price just shot themselves in the foot. Their list price was just last years soldboat.com data, which is silly. It would be like me demanding I get a stock at last year’s price when the market and economic conditions has since moved on.

In any event, even though I told them that; they could make 10-20% less commission and move onto the next boat to make more money, or make $0. All chose $0 and not one of the boats has sold months later! Not one passed the owner my offer.

I ended up going FSBO and buying the highest equipped boat at the lowest price by far by dealing directly with the owner on a FSBO site who was happy to negotiate and move on.

[Seasun1994]

Originally Posted by Networker

I ended up going FSBO and buying the highest equipped boat at the lowest price by far by dealing directly with the owner on a FSBO site who was happy to negotiate and move on.

What site?

[gr8trn]

As MicHughV explains so well, the broker does a lot for a cut of the usual and customary 10%. Here is the split of the 10% as I have known it to be done.


There are many brokers involved potentially.

Brokerage House
Listing Broker
Selling Broker
and sometimes a Buyers Broker.


Where does the 10% go?


Depending one the House Brokerage, they could get 40-60%. Let's call it 50% to make it easy. The remaining 50% is split between the Listing and Selling agents/brokers. I have seen this to go
House 50%
Listing 30%
Selling 20%


That's if the deal is Listed and sold by the same House.



Broker's are not getting 10%, so to indicated they are not worth 10% is nonsense, they don't get 10%. They may be worth 10% on many deals but they never get that.

[Jimbo2010]

Real estate brokers get 5%, no reason boats should be 10%.

the time to spend with buyer about the same, all other factors the same

[S/V Illusion]

Brokers often don’t have to share the 10% with anyone - no buyer’s broker, their own listing, serve as broker to both buyer and seller, etc… yet still think they are worth 10%. That’s a lot for answering the phone.

[MicHughV]

It's rare that a broker will back off from the 10% deal, I've had it happen, where a broker out of frustration cut the deal from 10% to 8%, but that was a rare moment.
Being a broker is a tough gig, as the effort to sell a $10K boat is about the same as selling a $100K boat, but for a tenth of the commission.