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.