This. I think this type of secretive pricing mindset will eventually disappear. Reminds me of how employees are discouraged from discussing salaries, which reinforces wage gaps and empowers employers to pay less.
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She said a “childs hobby” not “your child’s hobby”
To start: I will say that I agree with @Sunflower, with feeling it is a bit obscene what people spend on this hobby. but part of that’s because I’m not even in the ball park. Heck, I’m not even in the same state as the ballpark. And that’s not jealously, it’s just a lack of ability to comprehend wealth at that level. I think about the cost of each lesson, each pair of shoes, each bag of feed I buy. While I feel like I’m doing pretty decently to afford my home, life and two horses all on my own…in the grand scheme, I am just breaking into the fringes of “middle class” not even the upper end.
However, I do find this whole conversation to be a bit of “Emperor’s New Clothes.” There are people like @RAyers who point out the oddities and we just rush to defend. Why shouldn’t we be able to say that there is a real problem with how much this sport costs these days instead of defending its need to be that way? That’s just more elitist crap.
Yes…and that’s what I was trying to point out about the discussion. This topic has veered all over the place when we are considering how much it costs to buy or make a hunter and in some ways is completely useless because where is the real proof? Unless we can track n=30 (or ideally more) promising 4 yr olds in various programs through their road to the tippy top, we really can’t say that a decent amateur can take a promising $30k 4 year old and make it into that top horse.
@DMK - Yes. It’s always taken ability, resources and contacts to develop horses. Not saying that wasn’t the case. Just saying that the well of resources needs to be even deeper than ever before.
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At the National level for a “made” horse sure. But you can get a younger one (that still needs a pro to get it to the winning level at A shows, like Thermal or TBird) for less than that. We have a local barn that excels at derbies. Now the pros only can win Intl. derbies on those horses, but they were purchased for the 75k-125k range as younger horses with not much of a record…which mind you still seems crazy to me. The $1 million would be what it would cost you to by a Catch me as he is right now; same as with the winning Big Eq horses (like Clearway a few years ago). Not too many people buying a made horse a kid can ride around like that, and really the only kids that you see winning at the National Level like that are “kids” like Tori Colvin and back then Lillie keenan and they weren’t riding their junior hunters…
A few years ago a girl at a top barn here in Oregon had a VERY nice 3’6" junior hunter. She went to indoors and it was champion beating a horse owned by Dr. BP. I dont know what the horse was originally worth, but sitting next to the gils Dad on a flight (random) I did learn that the horse winning at indoors, raised its value by 250k and they sold it back there to a very wealthy family… My guess is that it was sold for the 400-500 range. The girl hasnt done much with it since and now she and her sister have moved mostly to jumpers… Its a different world.
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I wonder how much of a hit the horse selling market as a whole would take if past sales prices were recorded and registered? More than one buyer might balk at paying $100,000+ for a horse that meupatdoes imported a few months before at $30k! :lol:
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Honestly, if it were this easy everyone would be doing it. With vetting and shipping and quarantine that horse is probably not getting to her door for less than 40K, and that’s buying sight unseen and not flying there. A few months of daily riding & training, a few horse shows, a few other imports that colic & die or otherwise render themselves entirely unsuitable for profit making, and then this one reveals its quirk and the reason why it’s not 40k to start (again, they now know what they have over there). There is enormous risk importing one; you’re still rolling a 20 side die with odds that are not really in your favor unless you are a professional that owns their own farm. Ultimately, somebody pays for that risk.
You can certainly make a good go at importing & flipping, but quantity and the resolve to take the first reasonable offer you get (which is decisively not usually 100k) is what tends to make it profitable. The ability to straight up lose 50K on one that you traveled to try, vetted to within an inch of its life, quarantined, shipped and then spent 10K trying to save when it arrived sick, is a make or break factor in this business.
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In addition to the extra that goes into flipping horses, the price is what someone will pay for it. If this fresh import gets here and starts winning in good company and competing with higher priced 6 figure horses, that doesn’t seem so bad. You have to consider the time, money, and risk that the first person put into the horse before it was confirmed at winning in the US at whatever level. The 100k+ price tag reflects that it has now proven itself to some extent.
There are also of course some high 5 figure fresh imports that don’t have much record, but to be able to not lose a bunch of money every single time, this is what the fair market price may be for a fairly inexperienced import already here and healthy and able to be tried by new buyers.
Sure, some may balk at that price knowing the previous purchase price portion of the history. But if enough potential buyers are out there that won’t, then that is what sets the price.
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I’m not sure why everyone is losing their marbles. We aren’t talking about a sport where all you need is a pair of shoes and an open road. A “free” horse in a field eating hay is still going to cost more over the course of a year then house league soccer or T-ball.
Then we start talking about world class, the best of the best.
Equestrian sports are more easily compared to sailing, or racing cars/motorcycles/snocross, etc.
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My tongue-in-cheek comment had less to do with the import business and more to do with rising horse prices.
All of the training, daily vs. non-daily rides, sick after import vs. healthy as a, well, may influence the owner’s hoped-for price, but there is still ultimately a black and white number tied to that sale. My post questioned whether today’s sale prices would stick if a history was attached rather than, say, a trainer pushing a sale price up to gain commission or an owner inflating the price to recoup a long investment.
Someone earlier mentioned the housing market which I think is a fair comparison. In real estate, details such as a house’s fresh paint, staging, and painstakingly maintained landscaping won’t out-price a house in a better location (correlate with show ribbons).The market dictates prices and we can see all of the area homes’ details very easily, including tax assessments. There are market dips, but overall the chances of a house having a career-ending injury are minimal, making it a relatively safe investment.
Yet despite this it’s a sad fact that most of what we invest in our homes, usually an individual’s biggest–and financially burdensome–life investment, won’t come back to us when they’re sold. The market ultimately controls pricing, no matter how much we’ve sunk into the house. Contrarily, there are those who are arguing in this thread that everything invested should be accounted for in a horse’s price?
The general vagueness connected with horse value and the secrecy over pricing has, in my opinion at least, helped push escalating market prices. Nothing new, but when do we stop and wonder why a non-winning, green, potential ammie hunter is considered acceptably priced at $100,00k? That a horse priced more than most annual salaries wouldn’t be considered competitive at bigger shows? And that horse prices keep going up? The best horses in the country should be that much more expensive, of course. It’s the trickle down making even mediocre horses out of reach for most riders that’s tough to swallow.
It’s a dream scenario to have pricing disclosure within the horse industry, but still something wonderful to consider… Would overall prices drop if a sales history was attached to the average show horse?
I’d also be curious to know if the number of riders at shows like those during the WEF has grown or if the same group of riders are riding more horses?
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In many ways it has grown through the inclusion of lower unrated (and rated) divisions at these shows that never had them before. Twenty years ago and beyond you really couldn’t go to a big show and jump crossrails/2’/2’6, now you can.
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Yup, this happened to me. Horse got here, was sick, had surgery for what seemed to be a fairly benign process, then everything went south and it wracked up a giant bill and had to be euthanized. It’s a LONG game, investing in horses, and one that requires a bit of quantity, good luck, skill, experience, the right contacts, and lots more good luck. IF you can’t occasionally sell the 30K horse for 100K to make up for the 50K losses, nobody would bother. This is not a crime. It is a HARD business, probably for everyone but the show managers, I don’t know. I think they are about the only ones making money at this point.
I do, however, disagree that you can’t find nice horses for cheaper prices, even with import costs. It has just gotten harder and harder. But if you look, and look, and look, and go waaaay off the beaten path, then sometimes you can still find them. There are fewer horses to choose from since when the economy crashed many breeders all over the world cut back or stopped altogether. SO, not only do we have fewer horses to choose from (US and EU both), the sellers have gotten more educated on what makes a good hunter so the prices have gone up. And it can still turn into a puke when it gets here, or have a career or life ending illness or injury.
I don’t think anybody is suggesting that every horse needs to be sold for enough to get costs back out of. I once heard that trying to get your money back out of a horse when you sell it is like trying to get your gas money back when you sell a car. Lol. But again, if enough of them can’t be sold for a profit, or to make money on them somehow (prize money? lessons? leases? IDK?), then who is going to be developing horses? Why would anyone bother?
I think the industry is in trouble, in my opinion, because the shows are WAY too expensive for “normal” people. So it gets more and more elite with each passing year. Then fewer people can participate, which drives the costs up for everyone else to keep the circus going, which pushes out more people, and so on. Just my impression. And I show, and develop horses, and breed, and all of the above so I do have an idea what I’m talking about. I just don’t understand how in Europe they can run a show and have you able to do two rounds for €30-50, keep track of the results, have nice facilities, etc, and here it will cost you $1000 to take your jumper to a show to jump two rounds in nominated classes. That’s not sustainable for most people TBH. I wish I knew the answer. But the more expensive the shows and other fixed costs to develop a top horse become, the more expensive the horses will continue to get.
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I would say this has far more to do with the increased prices on mediocre horses than anything else. All the beginner & intermediate divisions migrating to the Big Leagues drained and ruined the B circuits in most areas of this country, and now there’s nowhere to show a mediocre horse and not feel as though you are just giving money away.
Rest assured, also, the $100k pre-greenie that’s not yet winning but does tick all the boxes for a big ammie future is not a mediocre horse. Blue ribbons in the Greens != Predictable Amateur success. The truly mediocre pre-green horse that should safely get the job done in his amateur future can be had for much less than that, and there are pleeenty of circuits where it will still be successful. They’re not necessarily cheap circuits because see above re: Dearth of B Circuits, but you can at least win yourself some blue ribbons there. Think Gulfport instead of WEF. (Most) Zone Finals instead of WIHS.
Totally agree. Where I disagree is the premise that average Amy Amateur has the contacts or ability to eyeball a 20K star hidden under a rock in Europe, and that it’s silly for her to pay an inflated US cost for the solace of having a known quantity with at least 90 days of “Americanizing”.
And that Amy Amateur’s professional is being greedy if she does not really see the upside in spending 5x as much time to sort through all the crap that comes with shopping off the beaten path and ultimately earn only half as much money (remember, Amy has to actually buy something for pro to get paid. Some Amys are quite finicky…). If Amy’s only got 20K? Yeah, you do the damn best you can with it, it’s going to be in your program anyway. But if you are not strapped like that then why make it harder just to save a buck by taking on a bigger risk? I’d stay here and risk it on an American 2-3 year old.
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I know my theory on “making a profit” in horses isn’t really sustainable. I basically exclude any expenses that I would have that would be there on a non-sales horse. i will hopefully always have a horse, be boarding, taking lessons, showing a bit, etc. So whether the horse is intended to keep or sale, those expenses are just there. Now, if it’s a second horse on top of “my” horse? Yea…all those expenses get counted because they aren’t my ‘going to have them anyway expenses’. such horrible maths and it’s really just a justification, but it helps me sleep at night (and is one reason I don’t ever buy horses to sell them)
Suppose she takes him to a big A show and he’s champion in the pre greens. Do you really think a buyer is going to say, “Wow, that one is fancy! But I’m not going to pay the going rate because the seller got him so cheap.”?
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No because as I mentioned above, prices can be tied to ribbons at X shows. If it wins, then there’s something tangible to tie back to the price. If a price history is tied to a horse’s record, then wins would be right there as well. In this thread, however, there’s been a side discussion on pricing for horses that won’t win at bigger shows. These horses still carry a hefty price tag.
But it’s a horse. It is not a house. There are definitely similarities in the markets but they are not identical. Really, think about this, you are trying to tie the value of a living, breathing, independently-thinking animal to a piece of paper that represents the subjective opinion of a whole bunch of random (but licensed!:disillusionment:) people & extenuating factors. It is always, always so much more intricate than this.
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Of course it’s a horse and not a house. And no, I wasn’t trying to tie value in anywhere other than show results. I merely suggest transparency and checking expectations in the horse world <gasp> could be a good thing that might impact the skyrocketing prices that are impacting and changing the overall industry. Obviously not for those who profit off of the current system, but for those who don’t have a disposable inheritance to blow on high dollar horses, it could be of tremendous benefit.
If a horse is truly worth its asking price then its connections should have no problem justifying it, no matter its past pricing. But anyone who has been in the industry knows that there are many “grey area” prices and situations where buyers have been pressured to pay more than they can comfortably afford. Transparency would help with these issues.
Again, I know it will never happen because there are those within the horse world who treat their businesses differently from every other industry and prefer to march to their own, behind closed doors drum. With the prices we’re discussing here, however, it’s probably time for an infusion of business fundamentals with a few customer system standards.
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There’s often more that goes into finding the resellable, amateur friendly hidden 20-30k EUR import. A friend of mine is doing this for her employer in the dressage world. She spent a couple weeks in Europe, has good contacts, went all over the unbeaten path, isn’t afraid of very young or green or quirky, narrowed it down to 6. 5 did not pass the vet check. But her employer paid for her to fly to Europe, stay in Europe, drive all around Europe, do full vetting with 30+ xrays on 5 horses that were not purchased. Yes, thankfully, you can do an extensive PPE there sometimes for half (or less) the cost as here, but all of that went into finding the one horse to develop. That’s not the price that went into the seller’s pocket, but that’s getting to be a common cost of importing these more rare finds. So maybe they hoped to bring home 2 or 3 but now they only have 1 to develop but a lot of money spent. That’s before the young horse arrives, is in full training with the pro, and shows in the US. It doesn’t seem right to say that the people finding the good horses shouldn’t be allowed to treat this like they are running a business. Anyway, the point is that there is a lot more behind trying to run a business buying and selling horses than the purchase price, even if you take away from all the horses that make it here and get sick, break, turn out to have a "hole’ that’s significant in our market, don’t develop to be as fancy as expected.
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Tiramit I hear ya, I really do. I despise hidden commissions, because by the time Trainers A, B & C have added in their commissions the horse is some ungodly number and I can’t get it sold. And for the most part they don’t sell, because most buyers aren’t idiots. They’ve sat on a dozen horses, they’ve seen what 60k or 80k or 100k gets them, and they make educated decisions based on that experience.
To that end, I give my sellers comps when they submit a new horse with a price that makes me hesitate, and show them what is out there in that price range that they will be competing against, and encourage them to consider how their sale horse stacks up.
But in the end there is no Blue Book, and inevitably they are sticking to that number because of an intrinsic value they know exists in that horse, and one that I am at a loss for how to describe or reproduce in an advertisement.
This story is literally from last week and I am so thrilled to report that seller was right and horse is already off to new home 
But I’m also right more often than I’d like, and we’re posting price reductions when horse is still for sale in 90 days, which is never good for your marketing presentation.
And I won’t even get started on vettings and the sometimes insane standards these working equine athletes are held to.
The people making the big money in this game are somehow getting these things ready to win in the 3’6" Greens in 30 days and selling for $250K, but very, very few of us are playing in that pond, and it’s a pond that has been around a very long time.
So when the average Non Big Name seller finally flips a 30ker for 100k in 90 days? I’m popping champagne and congratulating them. I mean, the taxes alone on that would almost equal the cost of the horse.
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