The Great Boat Hunt - Deja Vu All Over Again

Well, it seems like my bad luck is following me around. Remember that competing offer on the boat I was trying to buy?  Well, it happened again.  And for little reason that I can see.

The referring broker let me know, this past Tuesday, that the competing offer took the boat.  Oddly, the seller took $2000 less than I had offered in order to accept the other offer.  Strange, huh?  The other strange thing about it was that we were told it was an as is offer, which might explain things - but only if you stretch a point - but then in the same breath, we were told that a sea-trial had been done! Does that really sound like as is to anybody?

In the business world, an as is offer means the buyer is willing to accept all of the risks associated with the transaction.  In the case of a boat or yacht, that means that the sale will proceed without the need for either a marine survey or sea trial.  Maybe they only gave it away on the survey...

Even at that, giving up an extra $2K - when the only thing between you and it is a little time and the outcome of a survey - looks a little odd.  What would make that seem appealing to a seller?  I can only think of three possible reasons:

1. the seller might need money awfully badly, doesn't have much time to get it, and is afraid that a survey might delay the sale;
   
   
2. the seller might know something about the boat that makes avoiding a survey seem like a good idea; or,
   
   
3. the seller's agent might play up the possibility of something awful coming out of the survey, leaving the owner stuck with an unsalable boat.>

What would the seller's agent gain by doing #3, you ask?  Oh, I don't know... could it possibly have anything to do with the listing broker having to split the commission on the sale with the referring broker? Well maybe...

My understanding of industry practice is that unless the agents have negotiated a different split, when more than one agent is involved in the sale, commissions are split evenly between agents, resulting in a smaller commission for each agent. This means that  the listing agent will always lose money on a sale to a referred customer, but how bad is it?

Well, the way the math works out, the listing agent can make the better money by selling the boat to a direct customer at any the price greater than half the offer made by a referred customer!  Not a lot of motivation to get the best possible price for the seller, is it?

Just call me cynical, suspicious, and impatient.