I haven’t given this much thought, but I’ve been wondering how much importing a horse, on average, would cost, from Europe to The US. It might be a possibility in the future. But in general, I’ve wondered if importing is terribly expensive or not.
Roughly $10k, depending on where you are in the US
In my experience,importing has some fees that aren’t apparent when you’re first looking. Once you find a horse overseas, you have to pay your overseas agent a bank fee to exchange the funds from US to euro; ship the horse to the nearest airport & stable it until it’s ready to fly; fly it overseas ($10K); quarantine it here in the US; ship it from NJ/NY quarantine to your farm. Plus commission to your trainer and to your agent (30% of purchase price, total). I found that once you add in training to bring the horse to where you want it to be, you’re right back in the upper five figure US market prices. Just my .02!
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There are lots of threads on the cost to import that might be helpful to search. @PKP is not alone in her assessment that shopping in Europe isn’t necessarily cheaper than shopping at home, at least for the ammie buyer.
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“importing” from Canada is a heck of a lot less expensive. And you can still brag that your horse was imported!
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My experience has been that the 8-10k figure has been the TOTAL cost for a gelding. The flight over is about half that figure, not 10k. The $10k includes all the paperwork, vet work, and the required quarantine on this side.
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Also can do cheaper if you can “split” a pallet with someone! So instead of the $8000 flight per horse it’s $5000 because there’s 3 horses on the pallet (at least that’s how people try to do it here). Also, check to see if your own barn can be used for quarantine. When we had them come to look at ours, they approved us to quarantine as we have a separate area that we can stable the imported horses and then the vet came to us on the schedule set (rider had imported 2 mares and a gelding so this saved him a LOT of $$$)
BUT, as others have said, you really will not save that much money in the long run and make sure you have a good very reputable agent! I’ve heard many stories of people going over, trying that seemingly unicorn horse then getting home and bam, not a good anime fit! If it seems too good to be true it probably is! We always send all X-rays and vet reports done over there to our vets here as well. Basically, the big difference between over here and there is just the amount of horses you can look at ina smaller area!
Don’t be afraid to check out “smaller barns”. My trainers agent knew about an Ammie friendly gelding but he was at a family dairy barn, stabled WITH the cows (he was in Ireland) LOL so they shipped him to a local arena and isn’t he the best dude ever. Kid has easily moved into the 1.45 m and he ever would of found him without his agent 
Agreed. Last time we imported from Europe the “all in cost” was 7.1K. Fuel prices and the Euro/Dollar exchange rate can have an impact. If OP budgets 10K she should be in good shape.
agree, depends on the exchange rate. When I imported my horse it was about $7500 and that was shipping from Ireland to NY then to MD. And the fellow I know there recently said the amount was about the same (dollar was a little stronger against the Euro). Also I was told my horse might be in quarantine for I think 3 days, he was in and out of there/ the shipping agent told me they get them out as soon as lab work comes in. So I think he was there about 24 hours. Poor fellow lots of traveling…
As far as incidental fees such as commission to trainer and all that - I wouldn’t necessarily factor that in for shipping as you may have to pay that no matter where you bought a horse. But certainly any import or shipping fees should be included in the overall budget in looking for a new horse.
Also consider what airport is cheapest to fly into+where will QT happen then factor shipping from that to your location. People who have a quarantine set up or are close to the big airports will have an easier time being cost effective.
Ultimately, the end destination can help (or hurt) your budget. That said my recent(ish) research indicates you should be able to budget ~10k for importing an adult mare and be ok.
Mares are more expensive to import than geldings because they require an additional quarantine of around two weeks. These numbers are approximate, but I think I paid $1,000 to get her from Denmark to Amsterdam, $7,500??? for the flight/quarantine in New York and shipping to Ohio, $2,000ish for mare quarantine, then several hundred to ship from Ohio to Chicago. All in was around $12,000-ish.
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Ours were all in the $8500 range, but we’re not paying commissions or agents. There can be issues when horses have to spend extra time in quarantine, which could add time and $.
I imported a gelding last year from Holland to LAX (then to Oregon), all in it was around $8,000, with the LAX to Oregon being about $1,000 of it. Mares are more bc the longer quartantine.
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My experience (at least coming from Ireland, which was the most recent) is that $9k is the pallet price and $3k is the actual flight cost for 3 to a pallet. Then there’s the groom and airport fees plus the transport to the airport - The flight was I think $4800. Quarantine short and I picked him up from the quarantine facility myself so no additional transport fees after that. Vet work total required for import/export on both sides was about $1k. Transport on the departure side, stabling waiting for a flight out, vetting for purchase with xrays, etc added about another $2k after all was said and done. So I’d agree with my $8k figure quoted above for a gelding.
Agreed too. Mine was just shy of 10k for everything related to getting him here (gelding), but not his purchase price lol. And I was warned that if he got sick upon arrival, that would up my 10k, so I should have 2-3k ready for extra vet bills that could arise. Luckily he’s a tank and I didn’t have to use that fund :D.
Yes. Budget 10k to import a gelding. That doesn’t include purchase price, any commissions due, and your travel to try the horse.
We just imported some this past fall. $9k each for all in expenses, excluding delivery from quarantine to home. Tim Dutta Corp was very professional and did a perfectly wonderful job from start to home delivery of the horses. They do everything, very easy and organized.
