Maybe it’s not true. I can’t figure out this website. It looks like crap to carry ads?
Maybe publicity stunt to promote the sale?
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Yes, but if it is a horse who is worth 5k selling for 225k isn’t the way to do it 😦
Maybe publicity stunt to promote the “lifestyle” things in the website.
Friesian QH can be a surprisingly decent cross but what you get is lower level dressage horse. Not a Western horse at all
Found the video. Cute as a button. I’d offer $7,500 if he was sound at a PPE, actually as quiet as they’re claiming, and I could sort out some of that runaway canter when I sat on him during the trial. If that horse actually sold for that kind of money, then either they’ve managed to find a marketplace full of very-rich total-novices (which, let’s not lie, is a lot of the market for Friesians and Friesian crosses) or there’s money laundering going on.
For the record, if the sale isn’t real, the farm is, and it looks like what she does is take Friesian crosses to sales just like this - full of horses that do cute tricks like sit on hay bales and look pretty but have no record of doing anything that makes them worth more than $10K, then they sell for $65K+ and I’m utterly baffled. I think that’s a very special sort of market and I’m clearly not part of it. Or, again, money laundering… Horses seem like the perfect place for that sort of thing. Everyone just assumes they’re worth cajillions and we’re all rich. :lol:
Fair Market Value is defined as what a willing, but un-compelled seller, will take from a willing, but un-compelled buyer.*
If you’re slick enough to get a buyer to pay you $65,000 for a $10,000 horse without engaging in fraud then you are HORSE TRADER who can hang with Mattie Ross!!! 
And that $65,000 is, by definition, the FMV for that horse at that moment. Just because the buyer is a fool does not make the seller a crook. But most of us who’ve been around for bit that such things don’t often happen.
G.
*Compulsion, here, is legal compulsion (you MUST buy it or face legal consequences) NOT “I just MUST have that <break: enter name of goods or service: close break> or I shall collapse into a heap of inconsolable misery!”
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I think it’s legit, but they certainly have found their audience.
2020 Sale Averages:
Top 5 $100,000
Top 10 $67,800
Top 20 $55,375
Overall $29,390
Reminds me of one time I went to one of these ‘upscale’ horse auctions and the high seller of the day was this fugly, 14.3h thing with the worst conformation I’ve ever seen, and a head so big it was like a draft horse on a pony body. It sold for like 35k because five Amish kids sat on it and rode it through.
Money laundering is a thing. It’s a huge thing in my city. The best place to do it is casinos because you can buy thousands of dollars of chips in cash and then cash them back in later and walk away with a legitimate casino cheque. The next most obvious is real estate because you can buy a million dollar condo for cash and then legitimately expect to sell it for more. Both these tactics need some collusion from vendors. Another tactic is the hopeless little shop or cafe with no clientele so you can channel dirty money into the bank as daily revenue.
I’m not sure how it would work with riding horses because you need to be able to get your money back and these horses are a sunk cost. Unless the seller refunds the money.
I also did not know that truck training properly marketed added so much to the value of a horse!
Many years ago there was a scheme with Arabians. Breeders would con a non horsey people to invest money in the purchase of a horse. They would show records of what other Arabians sold for after a couple of years. What actually happened was that the breeders would buy and sell each others horses for huge dollars as evidence of high dollar sales…
Eventually someone became wise to this scam and the breeders ended up going belly up.
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Maybe drugs? I want to buy 200k in drugs from you, but I buy your horse for 200k instead because then it won’t be looked at as closely as me just depositing the money into your account?
Yep, the same thing happened with Alpacas. In the early-mid 90s, they were going for obscene amounts of money that could never be justified by the fiber they produced. It was basically a big pyramid scheme IMO. Lots of cheap Alpacas around these days.
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Ostriches before that.
Pairs sold for $20,000, that was in the 70’s, so big money then.
Breeders selling to breeders but only trading animals, not money.
Then advertising how much you could make, look at the prices!
Then selling to unsuspected people with big $ signs of what they would make once they had pairs to sell.
They also said restaurants would sell the meat, feathers and eggs were going to hobby markets.
All that didn’t materialize, ended up with many losing money, birds turned loose to fend for themselves.
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Some years back a friend who was a real estate attorney in IN was handling a closing where a Amish farmer was buying 160 acres (IIRC). The paperwork was done and ready and the Amishman showed up with mason jars full of money. They looked like they were either buried or kept in a really old cellar. This was transaction of several hundred thousand dollars. The fellow ended up short. He explained that he brought the wrongs jars and needed to go back and other ones. He had been driven there by a friend so they left and came back a short time later with enough jars to complete the transaction. My friend had to count it all and certify it was correct. Then rush to the bank and get it deposited before closing (the jar error set everything back). He later said it was the most stressful thing he ever did as an attorney!!!
When I worked in DC I was in charge of claims for a program that insured against income tax audits. We would pay for any taxes owed, up to the policy limit, as a result of an audit but not penalties or interest. In those days there was an entire industry built around “tax shelters.” Several I dealt with were based on sales of horses. The common example was that the taxpayer would buy a horse for a large sum (say, $100,000; in reality the horse was worth far less). The sale contract required 10% down in cash and the buyer signed a non-recourse note* for the balance. So the they conclude the deal, the buyer pays the downstroke, takes the property and goes on their way. Seller takes his money and goes on his way. The buyer defaults and the seller ignores it. He is usually a cash basis taxpayer and declares the $10,000.
How does the buyer benefit? If the buyer had an income of $1,000,000 and were in a 50% tax bracket then he would nominally owe $500,000 in taxes. If he deducted the $100,000 from his income he would have taxable income of $900,000. And would owe the government 50% of that, or $450,000. Thus saving $50,000 but paying $10,000 to get that savings. Net gain: $40,000.
The government tried on multiple occasions to challenge such transactions and lost most of them if the paperwork were in order. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed this loophole.
Scribbler, where you live are there reporting requirements when banks take in large amounts of cash? In the U.S. if you deposit in excess of $10,000 the bank must make a report to the IRS.
G.
*A “non-recourse note” is one where the buyer of personal property pays a down payment and signs a note for the balance. The note gives a security interest in the property to the seller. The seller agrees that the ONLY recourse the seller has to recover money in the event the buyer defaults is to foreclose on the property being sold. They also must bear the costs of the foreclosure.
Yes, sorry! Didn’t mean to imply I thought the seller was a crook. My comment about money laundering was mostly tongue in cheap. Thirty years of horses, and always at the low end of the price point. I’m well aware that fools will pay a lot for polished trash. 
If you can sell a 4 digit horse for 6 digits, more power to you. I have some anxiety that someone that foolish probably needs something dead broke and I often wonder how many of these neat, trick-doing horses leave their professional trainers and go home to stand in a field because their new owners don’t know how to push a single button, but that’s not a me problem!
Okay, I’ve gotten us way off on a tangent, but as the sort of person who feels guilty driving by the cops, even when I’m doing exactly the speed limit, I gotta ask.
Can’t you just money launder by buying Pizaaz (the very fast racehorse who has never spent a day at the track) from me for $200,000.00?
I take your $200,000, I give $50,000 to our friend Bill for “Hay”, $50,000 to our friend Thomas for “training” the other very fast racehorses I own, and I keep $100,000 for brokering the transaction. Pizaaz turns out to not be fast, which is just the way it works sometimes for horses, so you keep him around for a month, then ship him to auction. The next time you need to get $50,000 to Bill and $50,000 to Thomas, I sell you another very fast racehorse, who also turns out to be slow, because there are no guarantees, and we do it all over again.
If someone shows up and asks to see what I spent $100,000 on, well, the hay was eaten and the horses were trained and sold. If someone asks you what you spent $200,000 on, well, this horse you really liked the looks of, but he took a bad step and you cut your losses. Here’s the record of you feeding him for a month, so he really did exist.
If nobody keeps any horse for any length of time and you sell them high, high, high, you could profit big time.
The money launderers in my town were a group of car dealerships which, for the record, did get busted, and had the added bonus of having very transportable goods. Not sure what misstep they took because they really did sell cars and we were pretty damn rural, so the only place to buy cars for miles, but it was one of those hindsight being 20/20 things: suddenly everybody saw it coming. :rolleyes:
If that sales tag is true then wow. I’m in the wrong business! But, I will still take my little $125 mustang over these horses anyday. Especially when you are talking so dang much!
