sly_karma
Crew Member
Helped a friend yesterday do an outboard switch. He has a family place on Savary and likes my concept of a "cabin boat" - a jointly-owned unit big enough to make crossings with people and supplies but small enough to be hauled out and stored at the cabin and thus avoid annual costs of moorage or trailering from the interior.
He started hitting the online classifieds and eventually settled on a nice mid 70s Hourston 15 with solid transom and stringers and an 80s Merc 50 for $1500. Was preparing to do an overhaul and cleanup on the Merc when he spotted a local ad for a near identical Hourston 15 with what looked like a Honda hanging off the back - it was hard to tell because the sole picture was blurry and the text had no mention of engine details. The owner knew the hull needed a lot of work and disclosed this in the ad, resulting in few enquiries and zero viewings. Since it was fairly close by, my friend went and took a look and found the hull had obvious transom rot but the engine was a quite new four stroke BF50 in perfect showroom condition. The battery was flat so it could not be started for a demonstration. He ended up buying the hull-trailer-outboard for a measly $1000 when that Honda alone would have fetched $4000.
The owner had the boat for sale for well over a month. He got only a few enquiries and none of them proceeded to come view the boat, so he became discouraged and started knocking down the price from the original $2000. My friend hmmed and muttered about the state of the hull (big stainless reinforcing plate inside the transom in an effort to bandaid over the rot) and the motor not able to be run. He leveraged that into a knockdown price of a measly $1000.
Of course, once connected to a charged battery, the Honda 50 starts and runs fine, good compression on all pots and the tilt/trim works perfectly. We switched the motors yesterday so he now has a solid hull with new power.
This seller made a series of errors which provide a lesson to all selling used items:
He started hitting the online classifieds and eventually settled on a nice mid 70s Hourston 15 with solid transom and stringers and an 80s Merc 50 for $1500. Was preparing to do an overhaul and cleanup on the Merc when he spotted a local ad for a near identical Hourston 15 with what looked like a Honda hanging off the back - it was hard to tell because the sole picture was blurry and the text had no mention of engine details. The owner knew the hull needed a lot of work and disclosed this in the ad, resulting in few enquiries and zero viewings. Since it was fairly close by, my friend went and took a look and found the hull had obvious transom rot but the engine was a quite new four stroke BF50 in perfect showroom condition. The battery was flat so it could not be started for a demonstration. He ended up buying the hull-trailer-outboard for a measly $1000 when that Honda alone would have fetched $4000.
The owner had the boat for sale for well over a month. He got only a few enquiries and none of them proceeded to come view the boat, so he became discouraged and started knocking down the price from the original $2000. My friend hmmed and muttered about the state of the hull (big stainless reinforcing plate inside the transom in an effort to bandaid over the rot) and the motor not able to be run. He leveraged that into a knockdown price of a measly $1000.
Of course, once connected to a charged battery, the Honda 50 starts and runs fine, good compression on all pots and the tilt/trim works perfectly. We switched the motors yesterday so he now has a solid hull with new power.
This seller made a series of errors which provide a lesson to all selling used items:
- he didn't properly understand what he was selling (I believe the boat was inherited from deceased parent)
- no research - an hour or two online would have shown him the market value of the outboard
- focus on weaknesses rather than strengths - honest disclosure of hull problems overshadowed the fact that he had a near-new outboard to sell
- insufficient detail - a list of features including the engine year and model would have caught the eye of knowledgeable buyers and got him his asking price or very close to it
- poor pictures - only one pic posted and the focus was blurry
- poor presentation at showing - boat was still tarped up, battery wasn't charged so the engine couldn't be started.