What's a ballpark on pricing?

[Guppydriver]

I've always found it so fascinating that there is such a plethora of consumer friendly purchase resources for automobile buying available, but yet, it remains somewhat taboo to talk about boat pricing. A dealer won't sell you a boat unless it is advantageous to him/her in some regard. That could be creating floor space, profit, creating brand loyalty, future repair and service work, etc... I wish I knew exactly what people were buying their Moombas for. That would give me a leverage as a noob when trying to negotiate a fair deal with my dealer. I know that every deal is different, and what somewhat can negotiate in September in Tennessee on a purple and green boat has no bearing on what I can negotiate in Utah in May. Your good deal doesn't make you a great negotiator, it makes you a benefactor of good timing and circumstances. That being said, information is healthy and I wish everyone would be more transparent in what they paid before TTL. It would also be great to know what people are getting from the "pro shops" and extra bones getting tossed their way to seal the deal. If anything it gives a new buyer a little more confidence when they enter a showroom. For most, it's the second biggest purchase of their lives, and it can be intimidating.

That being said.....I do have two perspectives.

I hear time and time again, that the entry level brands have slim margins and therefore relatively low % discounts off list price. I also hear people say that seedealercost.com is a good tool to gauge dealer invoice and provide at least a baseline from which to start. Well, when I go to seedealercost and do the simple math, it appears that the entry level brands (Axis, Moomba,MC NXT, even MB) have virtually the same percentage mark ups as any other premium brand. The difference between list and invoice (according to seedealercost) on 2020 Moombas is 22%. Either the website is woefully inaccurate or the notion that entry level brands have razor thin margins is a dealer invented tool to maximize profits. Don't get me wrong, the dealer owns the boat and reserves the right to sell it for whatever they want, but either the margin is 22% (before freight, dealer prep, and doc fee mind you) or it isn't. I fully understand that a constant percent of less money equals less profit, so a dealer will make more money on a very high priced boat even if it has a lower percentile discount. Maybe it's just semantics, but I would prefer the dealer say "we just we need to make more money on this boat", then to act like the margins are different from the other boats they sell. The way they pitch it, they act like a 15% discount would be sold at a loss. It wouldn't. It would be at a 7% profit plus ancillary fees. Thats 7 grand on a 100k boat...with doc and prep...probably 8 grand. Is that enough profit when you only have 50 boats to sell in a year? Probably not, but as a buyer, it's at least worth knowing.

The other thing I found interesting is that when I spoke to my Centurion dealer about a Supreme I am looking at, he mentioned that they did studies which indicate that the average customer who purchases a boat there, on average, ends up buying 2.7 boats from them throughout the course of their lives. I can almost guarantee you that boats 2 to 2.7 lol are a lot more expensive than boat 1. Like with pickups, people are fiercely brand loyal with boats and boat dealers. He didn't just want to sell me a Supreme. He wanted to sell me a Supreme, then a Centurion, then another Centurion with 30 of the bow cut off apparently . New, first time, buyers should always express interest in the premium lines as part of tactic in negotiating their entry level brand. Just my 2 cents.

Anyway, sorry for the long first post. I'm quarantined for the second time in two months because of family members and I'm scared I'm going to be the first human to actually finish Netflix.