Quote:
Originally Posted by NavalNerd
In all fairness I had a horrible experience with Tony Brewer.
I found a boat that I was interested it purchasing and the first thing he did was try to sell me another boat. Not great for the seller.
Next he refused to honor my buyers agent. Finally, he was so unreasonable and such an ass that I just walked away from the boat. And this was a boat I really wanted to purchase. Please feel free to contact me for the complete story. |
Good Afternoon,
I have been sent the link to this thread and have been urged to rebut.
I respectfully submit my side of this story.
David J McKee from
Georgia ( Navalnerd) contacted The Little Ship Company in February 2017 about a 13 year old, 37 ft. ex
bareboat charter boat priced at $135K that was docked in Green Turtle Bay marina Kentucky.
He told me that his area of sailing would be the
Caribbean.
Given that her whereabouts was only 2 degrees south of the latitude of
Washington DC, the normal cost
• of unstepping the
mast,
• the approx four-day Journey down the river to the coast,
• restepping the
mast,
• sailing it initially to St Pete and
• from there either sailing it to the
Caribbean or
• day hops around the bottom of
Florida through the keys (stopping every night because of the
fish traps) to Ft Lauderdale and then
• loading and
shipping her to the Caribbean
would approach 30% or more of the purchase value of the yacht.
I suggested he look at a similar vessel that we had listed right here in
St Martin to save himself a lot of time,
money and stress.
He chose to stay with the vessel in Kentucky.
Fine so far. I had to at least give him the option.
Mr. McKee was supplied the previous
survey one year old
survey at no cost.
Over the next two months much discussion and negotiation ensued and a viewing for the boat between the seller, Mr. McKee and his wife was eventually arranged for April.
They duly met, inspected the boat and liked what they saw.
The seller offered to help supervise the unstepping and restepping of the mast, supply a
cradle for free and accompany the vessel down to the coast with Mr. McKee and give him a technical ‘hand over’ on the way down.
The main stumbling blocks were 1) the
price offered was unacceptably low and 2) Mr. McKee wanted to only accept the vessel once it was at the coast.
The seller, having been bitten by a previous buyer that reneged on a deal after the vessel was taken to the coast, predictably refused.
It was a deal breaker.
Around this time Mr. McKee contacted a local broker to represent him and to assist him to ( I assume among other things) ram through the two points above that the seller had refused.
(It is well to note that in a co broke situation the buyers broker should always be the first to contact the listing broker and all
communications are done through the brokers.
At no time in a co broke situation does the listing broker ( in this case me) make any contact with the selling brokers client ( McKee) .
Buyers brokers cannot be introduced months after the prospective buyer’s initial contact with the listing broker. Many brokerage houses will not even accept a co broke if the prospect has at ANY time in the past enquired about ANY boat that the brokerage has listed…no matter how long ago it happened.)
The broker contacted me and given we had already been dealing with the McKees’ for two months and had already arranged a visit and discussing paperwork, we refused the co broke citing standard broker protocol.
The broker, in contravention of all accepted broker ethics, then went behind our back directly to the seller to try to do a deal.
The seller declined referring this broker to me.
Eventually, under protest, and to get the deal done we accepted the co broke.
The other broker then presented a wholly inadequate purchase agreement that he is on
record as saying to the seller he would “probably not sign himself”
Amongst such issues as conflicting provisions that made no
legal sense and the fact that there was no provision for arbitration if anything went wrong, the problem was the
price was still too low and the buyer wanted the vessel delivered to the coast before finally accepting and paying for it.
Deal breakers as far as the seller was concerned.
At this point Mr. McKee stopped dealing with both brokers and approached the seller directly and sent him a spreadsheet showing how, if they just cut both brokers out, they could do the deal themselves and cut out the professional representation and the brokerage
fees.
The seller, somewhat uncomfortable with this turn of
events forwarded it to me.
An excerpt, cut and pasted from Mr. McKee’s
email to the seller below:
“Assuming a purchase price of $128,500 the math would work as follows.
Purchase Price$128,500 Percentage Paid to Brokers 9% Amount Paid to Brokers $11,565 Net Purchase Price to seller $116,935
We feel that a reasonable price for the vessel is $120,500. At this price, and assuming no brokers, you actually make $3,565 more than the original at $128,500.
Purchase Price $120,500 Percentage Paid to Brokers 0% Amount Paid to Brokers$0 Net Purchase Price to seller $120,000"
The seller, being a Law Professor, the Chair of Social Studies and the Director of Criminal Justice and Law at a local college and more importantly, an honorable man, declined.
He replied to Mr. McKee in part saying:
And I quote:
“Though you may not like Tony for whatever reason, he is the best broker in the Caribbean. The company that I had manage the boat sells all their managed boats through him with ZERO problems. Your concerns about his contract are misplaced.
Yes, it should have been a done deal but having brought another broker into the deal after dealing with Tony was not the best move and did violate the terms of my listing contract. When I did get the brokers together to split the commission you backed out on the same day.
Your initial price was too low and the contract that (name of broker) sent me had too many holes for me and you. When I asked him if he would sign that contract he replied “probably not” thus Tony sent you our counter offer on his contract which has no holes and protects us both”
At this point Mr. McKee walked away. I reached out to him afterwards to still try to sort something out but he did not reply.
Soon after we
sold the vessel for an acceptable price to a couple who love the boat and the seller accompanied the new owners with the vessel up to the
Great Lakes at no charge to give them a good handover.
Intel suggests that Mr. McKee is in the process of buying a vessel in the Caribbean which, we suggest, is what he should have done in the first place.
Having bought my first boat through a broker in 1991 and having
sold another through a broker in 2002, I understand the pressure and the emotional trauma that one goes through. I also understand that this same pressure and emotional trauma can lead some people to do things they would not normally do in their everyday lives. So we do understand things may just have run away with the McKees’ which resulted in this uncomfortable turn of
events.
Nothing personal and we have moved on.
Not the first time this has happened and sadly probably will not be the last.
We wish the McKees’ all the best with their new purchase.
As brokers we bring 1) Fiscal Discipline 2) Bullet Proof Paperwork and 3) Emotionless Negotiation to what can turn out to be a very fraught time in the lives of both the buyers and the sellers.
If anyone would like a more balanced feedback of our performance in this regard may I suggest they go to my website at Littleships.com and click on the ‘Testimonials’ link.
Not one of these testimonials was solicited.
Thank you for reading this.
Thanks, Navalnerd for the recommendation!
Re: Experiences with Brokers in St. Martin
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