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Horse sales ads pet peeve

I am currently horse shopping . When the ad says “Mid fives”, many will say “Mid fives starting with a three” or “Mid fives starting with a six”. Mid fives is a large range. Don’t leave it as mid fives. Give us a hint so at least I can say yeah or nay without asking price first thing. The bottom line is I can’t afford your $65,000 guy but I can your $45,000 one. I hate asking price up front but I am not going to waste your time with all of the other questions if this one doesn’t get resolved first.

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I use ranges all of the time and probably am guilty of doing exactly that. Though I have a pony in that range where I say “just under the mid five point”. I would consider 65k to be “mid/high fives” from a range perspective.

But I hate the sixes even more. What does low sixes mean? Does it mean $105k? Or does it mean $215k? Even worse, “mid sixes” where people typically mean $150k, but don’t seem to realize that “mid sixes” by definition would be $500k.

But from a seller’s perspective, I will say that I am AOK if the first question is, “what is the price?” In fact, the first message I usually get is, “please send me more info and price.”

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Well if you are looking on Facebook you are lucky that some of the pages even allow any type of range.
It’s just time consuming but you just have to message the seller and ask the price and then go from there.

This seems clear to me? Mid-fives starting with a six means 60k to 69k. If you are shopping in the market where a mid-fives starting with a six doesn’t automatically make you scroll, are you going to quibble over 9k when we all know an offer in the 60k range would probably be accepted?

As a seller it doesn’t bother me at all if you ask for price right up front. If I tell you xx,xxx and you never say another word I’m fine with that. Seriously, no hard feelings at all.

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Oh yes, love the ads that say starting with a 4 or a 6. I’m complaining about ads that just say mid 5’s.

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Ohhh gotcha! Yeah that’s like 40k to 70k in my opinion.

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To me, it shows the massive disconnect in some people’s minds when you get to “real” prices. If you can afford 45k for a luxury animal, what’s another 20k more? What they don’t realize is that you’re not wiping your bum with 20s and that you saved for years for that 45k budget.

Reminds me of that recent Dover quote “this horse is very affordable at 85k”. Say WHAT?

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Same, no big deal. I do try to give a slightly more specific range.

Question: what do you all interpret “low-mid fives” as? I have one in that range right now and am surprised as to what some people seem to think that means.

$20K-$25K is what I think

I see that as the lower end of mid fives so somewhere in the 40-49k range. But I could read it also meaning low to mid so 10k-70k.

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It would be so much easier if FB just allowed posting the price. It is so stinking silly. I put in my mare’s ad: She is a 10 carat horse, since many people use the little carrot icon to denote numbers. I think most people got it, but some still ask the price. Low 5’s is really not helpful, because that can mean $20K, which is double the budget of someone shopping for $10K. And now the groups have categories, which is helpful, but the letters mean different things depending upon which group, so it gets confusing for buyers as well as sellers who might be cross-posting.

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Some groups are going with the calculator in the pictures route of pricing. Recently saw one ad that said “important information included in the pictures”.

This, either using emojis or taking a screen shot and writing on the picture.

Horse is :v:t4: :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed:t4: zero zero or :four: :five: :zero: :zero: :zero: or :keycap_ten: :carrot: People can get creative.

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Not infrequently I’ll see an ad that says something like “high low/mid fives” and I just have to laugh. I can see if a seller has a clear description of the price brackets in their head, that it would make sense to them. But because there’s no universal agreement on what those terms mean, it just comes out as nonsense.

To me:

Low 5s = 10-20k
Mid/low 5s = 20-40k
Mid 5s = 40-60k
Mid/high 5s = 60-80k
High 5s = 80-99k

And then WTF knows with the sixes, as I mentioned above. I have always used the above guidelines when posting my horses and people generally seem to figure out what I’m conveying.

There are always some wing ding questions (e.g. I post “mid/high fives” and someone asks if I mean 15k), but there are questions like that no matter what.

The biggest problem I’ve seen is that if you post a range the buyer usually assumes the lowest number in the range and the seller usually is closer to the top end of the range. But that goes for many more things than horses!

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