Technically I don’t think the OP ever said Big Eq. Everyone jumped to that conclusion, but it could be a 3’ or 3’3” horse. Given the right circumstances the OP could still be quite new to the sport, although it’s surprising they didn’t pay this commission on the current horse. Although if they were just buying and not selling/buying maybe it wasn’t as noticeable.
Sorry some folks aren’t all typing nice OP. As in life, this board has all kinds.
Exactly. Could be a new parent to the child (divorce situation and one parent remarried and is helping fund new horse). Could be a grandparent stepping in. Could be a parent who previously just wrote the checks and now wants more visibility.
Could be that the child leased horses from the trainer as a developing rider and that the equitation horse was purchased directly from the trainer (no commission) and that parent is truly new to the commission schedule.
Could be as simple as finances changing with the recent economic downturn and suddenly the parent funding this adventure is more involved.
I also don’t see “humble bragging” in the post. I think the question is fair. Had a friend whose first horse ended up being a zone champion and was worth significantly more than when it was imported by the trainer. The sales commission confused the family as well as on the front end they paid one price that was “all in.” They’d caught lightening in a bottle with their first horse and had no idea how the system worked and were completely shocked and angry with the commission when the horse sold. It happens.
OP, the commissions are a lot of money today and for high-dollar horses. I feel you there.
But unlike real estate, most pros most of the time don’t sell lots of high-dollar horses lots of the time, so they want more from each sale. That said, I think it’s a fair question or criticism of this industry to ask why expenses are distributed as they are. E. g. Why does the cost of day care at a show seem so high? On the other hand, why is board set up to be a break-even proposition? Why do so many pros make more buying and selling than they do training or teaching? Why don’t we pay people who start our young horses more and those riders who can/will bail us out of our training mistakes even more than that? But the bottom line is that you will/do have to pay these highly skilled, seasoned, established pros the fees they command. Or have an adult negotiation about it. There’s nothing wrong with, business-person-to-business person, asking for what you want.
I think you are just bumping up against a surprisingly large wad of cash that you need to pay out for a service or product you don’t find as vital as all the other stuff you have paid for along the way with your expensive horse? Or do you just not like paying commissions both coming and going? I don’t love the second scenario, which has become common.
Back when I was a sprout, it was only the seller who paid a commission to the selling trainer and that was 10%, but perhaps more for the less expensive horses. That made sure the trainer, who presumably works as hard to sell an expensive horse as a cheap horse, still finds selling the cheap horse lucrative enough to bother.
The Seller then paid their selling trainer/agent. That pro then distributed smaller percentages of the commission as needed their other colleagues in that deal. And people involved can get greedy, holding out their hands for having done little bits of work.
The selling agent can, in theory, tack on a percentage to the price that covers everyone’s commissions. I don’t like this kind of horse dealing unless I agree to the kind of deal where I say what I want to get out of the horse and allow them to pursue a higher price (thus earning a higher commission) if they think they can. I don’t care how this goes, so long as there is transparency.
The buyer’s trainer might charge some kind of “finder’s fee” (presumably for the networking and pre-screening of horses done). Or that pro might charge an hourly rate for this same kind of work. Their network itself has value, for which they want to be paid. That’s easier to accept if you remember that it cost them a lot of money to get into the circles where they would have enough credibility to find the non-rip-off $200K horse, or get someone else’s client to believe they ought to pay that for yours. If you don’t think that’s true, ask yourself if you’d like me, an educated, fair-minded by random internetter, to broker the sale of your expensive horse for you. If the answer is No then the truth is that reputation and access to others has value to you.
I am sorry that you’ll have to write a check so big. But remember that you’ll be getting and even bigger one.
Indeed. To say that you are making unusual financial sacrifices to not have kids and not every want to own a home while living in NYC isn’t saying as much as if you lived outside that metropolis.
A huge proportion of people rent forever in NYC (preferably in the same place, preferably for more than one generation) so that they get the benefits of rent control.
I think that bit of disclosure ought to be made for the non-NYCers reading along.
Certainly, a commission is customary in the buying and selling of upper-end horses. But 30%+ on $200k seems a bit high to me. Perhaps I’m just not stupid rich.
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But it’s not 30% on a 200K transaction. It’s 15% on that sale. If the OP doesn’t re-buy another horse, they aren’t asked to pay the same on the next one. Look, I think commissions spent on the Buyer’s side is new and greedy and BS. But if the OP didn’t buy or bought a cheaper horse, your math doesn’t work.
First, the OP never said she couldn’t afford it. Said they weren’t “ultra rich”. Didn’t say they were out to screw the trainer. Said they are spending more than they probably should on kid’s dream. (I could say the same thing- can afford my horses but it is a lot, and that “a lot” is growing. )
These probably aren’t really “horse people” and are waking up to the fact that unlike tennis or golf, the "equipment’ needed for this sport eats, needs lodging, gets sick, goes lame, has its own equipment, And then there is the training.
My guess is that current horse is their first show horse. Very possibly bought from/thru trainer for XXX dollars. That XXX dollars could well have included trainer commission which was not clearly disclosed.
Now family is getting numbers thrown at them and trying to find out what’s the norm.
Seems we all are aware of stories where prices were inflated, not documented, commissions not disclosed etc. This industry is not regulated or overseen like real estate sales, and practices are murky sometimes. Florida has passed a law or two around disclosures of various things including commissions in horse sales. But that’s likely not true of many states, and I personally feel for someone who is dipping into the higher end horse market for the first time.
I was just curious what 200K+ equitation and jumper horses looked like, and on BigEq.com:
Equitation:
Jumper:
I know that doesn’t mean that the seller will get that price, of course. Re: the wisdom of spending so much, although as I said above I don’t think the OP is out of line asking what is “normal” because it’s always good to determine if a practice is fair/acceptable, I also think it’s worth to have a discussion with a child about the child’s future career choice/college prospects in the horse industry to determine if spending that much is worth it to the child and the family, regardless of whether the family can technically afford it or not.
Not to totally derail this conversation, but rent control is essentially dead. There are zero new rent-controlled apartments entering the market, and now no more stabilized apartments either since 421a ended. Rent control applies to fewer than 1% of apartments in the city now.
It probably still exists in the minds of a lot more people due to the reruns of episodes of Friends from 25 years ago.
OMG! I can’t imagine what folks’ housing costs are now, then. I own a rental in a state that chose rent control, recently. I believe folks looked at other examples in places like NYC and LA and tried to warn that it wouldn’t work well in the long term. As the property owner, I now see why that is.
Sorry for the side-bar, you other innocent by-standers 
I’ll just add a different perspective—I work in talent acquisition. Ie I do headhunting (or used to—now I lead an internal team). Fees for the kinds of high level folks I find range from 20-35%. Usually salaries are at $200-350k, not including bonuses (which get factored into the fees). And I’ve even had agreements where it doesn’t matter who finds the winning candidate, me or the client—if a contract is signed, I still get paid.
It seems ludicrous from the outside looking in. Most people on look to see if we actually landed a hire. But the amount of work that goes into sourcing, building an interview process, coaching a hiring team (especially if they don’t have an internal talent aq team), and ultimately delivering a white glove candidate experience is A LOT. It’s rare Ive worked on more 1-3 executive searches at a time because of how time intensive it is.
I think horse selling/buying is very similar to the headhunting world.
You hire a headhunter for their expertise, depth of network, and ability to make the “right,” sustainable match that is going to deliver ROI. Same deal with trainers and horses. The ROI might be a bit different—maybe it’s that you’re after a medal finals placement.
The other parallel between headhunting and horse buying/selling is that I’ll say the contract terms vary wildly. I’ve worked with smaller companies before that I know will give me repeat business and negotiated fees because at the end of the day, I want to help and I want to get paid. A lot of trainers feel similarly. You do have to be very tactful.
I negotiated the purchase of my last horse fairly ruthlessly. I told the trainer I’d pay a higher commission fee if we got the price down to X because I would still save some in the end. She complied with that.
Granted, this was nowhere near the six figure mark. Those kinds of purchases tend to be one-offs, much like headhunting for executives. So likely a trainer would want to get the full fee.
And because you can’t do yourself what a good headhunter can do. You won’t get the results. You’ll either end up wasting time trying to be polite to no-hopers, or just spend hours looking over resume’s and none are suitable.
And because you don’t do this often enough to maintain your own full-time staff to do it as experts. Not doing it often oneself is a good reason to contract with outside expertise.
In the end the $$$ paid to the headhunter is far, far cheaper than making a mess of it on your own. That’s what some companies learn the hard way.
ABSOLUTELY. Couldn’t state this better.
This was a really good comparison. And, I’ve seen some cases where the fee for finding a corp board member is 100% first year board comp.
I made this point earlier but it seems relevant again: the majority of trainer incomes IS the training/teaching. But with overhead and the hours, it’s still a pretty measly sum. Most of the trainers I know, who make money selling horses they trainer or commissions from selling/buying clients’ horses, are using that commission money to buy the next horse they train and sell, which funds their next horse, etc. I’m not going to start expecting my trainer to ask 10% instead of 15% commission next time just because she made a little “bonus” on my selling my last horse.
We are saying the exact same thing!
I think just from personal phrasing “can’t afford” to me means -
Definition A: “oh [edit] this feels like a lot and I would need to make more than very minor adjustments to my investments/cash flow to do X thing - I probs should reduce the cost/volume what I am intending to do”
to others can’t afford means
Definition B: “[edit] if I do this thing…I literally cannot make my mortgage payments and I will have to dip into Jimmy’s college fund/ take a loan against my 401k / go get a personal loan from Wells.”
I am saying they are likely Definition A and should purchase a jumper for 160k vs 200k
I think I inadvertently hurt a lot of feelings with my definition of “can’t afford” which to me is Definition A. Which apparently not how a lot other folks function. Which means that folks felt a lot of judgement coming from me about the way they manage their investments/finances to have horses.
I learned something new about people through this discussion! I always thought horses were considered an absolutely luxury good (grew up with not a lot of extras) and didn’t realize how many very large sacrifices folks make to have them! As I come to approach the problem not from “cutting out / not pursuing other things to have horses”, but from “what can I do to make MORE $ so that I can have horses (taking certain jobs, studying something not as fun at college bc of the payoff literally in the working world)”.
In this case - whole thing is slightly ridiculously silly as the OP is participating in this sport at a level most of us will never touch. They simply just reduce their very large budget for the jumper purchase and everything will be fine? It not like if they don’t get a $200k jumper kid will never touch a horse again.
Good god, I need a shower. Most people’s viewpoints are not A or B. The “fun” things you might study in college or on your own are good at teaching this. Life experience teaches it too.
Oh god - of course it is a spectrum. Sorry for being so flip - excellent point that I should be exceedingly explicit when I communicate. Especially on the internet where folks don’t always catch tone or implied things.
I am on the far side of Def A on the spectrum of what affordability means to me. I am neurodivergent so I didn’t realize SO many people as evidenced by the frustration folks felt at my discussion of what affordability mean to ME in context of OP’s plight – are more towards Def B on the spectrum or somewhere in the middle. That was the intent of my statement.
I come here to learn and engage. I learned SO much through this thread about money mindsets, what is considered a luxury, the sacrifices people make to keep sport pets in their lives, etc. I’d like to see more admittance of learning and more open discourse @OverandOnward in this and other threads has often written about learning or even changing their mind related to discussions had.
I personally am inspired to increase my lease budget for myself - why not live a little?!?! - $20k/yr lease fee is f*cking peanuts these days! Or maybe I can look to make cuts in other areas vs chasing down the next investment / job. I’m open.
I’m not sure what ultra wealthy is, if not this. If the &200k horse and all the training, showing, travel, etc cost doesn’t phase you, I don’t know why you want to die on the hill of paying the person most central to the entire functioning, success, and safety of your son’s program his commission.
You could, of course, suggest to your son that he continue in the Equitarion on what sounds like a perfectly lovely horse.
Cheaper / better than ending up with a board member who turns out to be the wrong fit. Board members are there to participate in governance of the business, so they are a very important selection.
To drag this back to the subject of commissions to a trainer who is / should be finding the right horse for the client … as I see it, it is kind of the same thing.
I was raised in a ‘do-it-self’ culture. But as an adult I’ve learned the value of paid professionals who know what they are doing vs. a DIY’er with little experience in the subject. I pay pros for tons of stuff my parents insisted on doing themselves. They had ragged results. A lot of work on the house they left to correct things they ‘did themselves’.
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