On Mar 26, 4:48 am, "Chuck Gould" wrote:
On Mar 25, 8:44?am, "MD" wrote:



? ? ? ?Through a long chain of events that I don't want to repeat
here, I have come into the ownership of a nice 4-year old ski boat
although I am not really a boater. ?I rode it once in the fall, and it
performed well. ?Also, a very good mechanic checked it over and told
me it was in really good shape. ?I live in Cincinnati and my question
is what is the selling season for this type of boat. ?I am assuming
that right now is the absolute best time to sell the boat, but I don't
know if that is the case. ?What I would really like to know is when
the boating selling season practically ends in Cincinnati -- May,
June, July, whatever. ?I am getting all sorts of different advice
about the boat, and my main concern now is deciding what my time frame
for selling is. ?Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

MD

It's almost April 1. You have about a month of prime selling season
left.
People want a boat for Memorial Day Weekend, and they want to have it
a couple of weeks ahead of time to get it set up properly. Between
whenever it thaws out in your neighborhood and the first of May is
your best chance to get top dollar.

Advertise it everywhere you can. Most FSBO ads are cheap, a lot are
free, and most are only moderately effective so you need several of
them working at once. Your eventual buyer will answer one of those
ads- but since you don't know in advance *which* one, you need to take
a shotgun approach.

If it's still sitting in your driveway after April 30, it's literally
"mayday" on the price front. Since you have a short window of time and
this is the month when *everybody* has their unwanted boat for sale,
start with a realistic price. In a lot of cases you start really high
and hope that the buyer will dicker you down- but when a short season
market is topsy turvy with a lot more supply than demand buyers are
less likely to hassle with trying to dicker down to "fair" price.
Buyers with a lot of choices typicaly hope to find a boat with a fair
asking price, *then* dicker down a bit, and feel like they got more
boat than they paid for.

If the boat doesn't sell pretty quickly after you start to market it,
it will either be price or condition that impedes your sale. If you
have a lot of bait dangling by using a variety of ads but the phone
doesn't ring or the email doesn't do whatever email does you can be
pretty sure the problem is your price. People will be looking at the
ad and concluding "Wouldn't matter how nice that boat is, it couldn't
possibly be worth that!" (That's also why it's important to use
several sources- there's a chance that one ad venue might be really
weak and could be blamed for a lack of calls, but if you've got the
boat advertised almost everywhere it's tougher to conclude that none
of the magazines or websites are working.) If you get a few showings
and folks are walking off with the standard, "Thanks, we'll think
about it. We have a bunch of boats to see before we decide" that
normally indicates that the issue is condition. Could be dirt, smell,
damage, excess wear, or any number of things but if more than a couple
of people drive out to your house knowing what you have for sale and
knowing what you're asking for it and then make a clumsy exit,
something about the boat will be turning them off.

After May 1, cut the price. Everybody else will be cutting theirs.

Like JimH said, after the end of June, first of July, you will
probably need to cut the price down to a lot less than you hoped to
get for it to find a buyer at all.
This year the Fourth of July is a Wednesday, so no long weekend for
most guys punching a time clock. The long weekends are going to be
Memorial Day and Labor Day, and fewer people will be out in August
trying to buy a boat for Labor Day weekend than will be out in the
next 5-6 weeks trying to buy a boat for Memorial Day.

Another reason to price it to sell ASAP: if fuel prices continue to
rise between now and Memorial Day and then stay high through midsummer
(as they have done the last two years) it will really hammer the
market value of a wide variety of boats. Every two-bits the price of
gas goes up drives away another chunk of the market.

Thanks to you and the other posters for your very helpful replies.

MD