It all depends, but I would at least hope that the seller is upfront about the conditions under which they will sell a horse or hold it. Sellers whose business is selling, with multiple horses, are often less likely to hold. This makes sense for them as buyers are not always upfront on their end, either!
This discussion is triggering my seller’s PTSD, lol. Not a horse, but: I sold my very nice 2H bumper pull a few years ago that had all sorts of extras that are rare (I had it customized quite a bit), so it got a ton of interest when I listed it. I couldn’t believe the number of (literal!) tire kickers who wanted me to not show it to anyone else until they got there, even though they couldn’t tell me when that might be, who wanted me to hold it even though they couldn’t come look for another week, who lowballed my very reasonable asking price and then got all pantsy when I rejected the offer, who made appointments at odd times and then didn’t show up or contact me again, or who did show up, often much later then we’d scheduled, and then revealed that they didn’t have the money but if I held it for them they would buy it once they sold THEIR trailer/car/horse/whatever.
People accused me of hiding damage (I had included a picture of the single dent in the ad itself), of not being honest about its use (very low for its age), of lying about the new tires it had (I had the receipt), and so on. I had it fully checked over when I got the tires replaced at the dealership where I’d originally ordered it from, and it got a clean bill of health. When I mentioned this to one buyer who clearly did not know anything about horse trailers she wanted to talk with the dealership to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything. I was like: Um, you can crawl underneath to look at the frame, you can lift up the mats and the floor, you can hook up the electric and check that, the dressing room is empty and obviously in good shape; there really isn’t a ton else to look at, but go ahead! I told her if she wanted to take it for a test drive she could, and so on and on an on. She spent hours looking at this thing, finally offered me a fraction of the asking price, and when I counter-offered with something a little less than I was asking, she drove away promising to contact me later. Never heard from her again.
I finally sold it to a very nice person who drove all day to come get it who was worried that I would sell it out from under her. I promised I wouldn’t, since I had other people lined up if that deal fell through and she was desperate for a replacement (her trailer had sort of fallen apart unexpectedly and she had a bunch of competitions coming up). When she drove up she was so relieved to see it sitting there I thought she would cry. The whole experience was incredibly aggravating until that last buyer actually came through, paid me the agreed-upon price in cash, and then sent me a picture of the trailer with her horse on it the next week. Everyone else kind of sucked. :mad:
