Does anyone do resales as an amateur? I’ve been thinking about bringing in a project horse to flip and resell as I have the time and resources. I like working with green horses and training through 1st/2nd level dressage as well as some jumping, trails, trail obstacles etc. I really like the project aspect and I’ve been silently musing about running a very small sales project (as in having one project horse and selling before moving onto the next)
Anything to be aware of regarding how it might affect my amateur status? Any strong reasons why such a small scale sales business would be a terrible idea?
Buying/training/reselling doesn’t affect your amateur status under USEF rules as long as you own the horse so no worries there.
I have done this a couple of times and always lost money (even on the barefoot, easy keeper, out 24/7 pony I bought on Craigslist for under $2k). I did enjoy it though, and some people do manage to make money on serial projects. There are old threads with advice from those people who actually know what they’re doing.
All I can suggest is to choose a horse that’s marketable even if it’s not exactly what you would buy for yourself. And have a plan in case one turns out to be completely unsellable due to injury, sanity, etc. People who make money selling horses are generally playing a numbers game (win some to varying degrees, lose some). With only one horse at a time you may need to absorb a loss for longer before you make it up with a gain.
What price range are you buying at and what are you selling at? Do you jump too? Because at a basic 1/2 level dressage that horse is equally marketable as a jumping horse at the lower levels and they are going to want to see a jump. Your market will be an versatile all around horse that someone can have fun with.
What breeds are we talking? Are you buying young warmbloods at 10 to 15k and starting and selling them at 3rd with a change?
Or are you buying at 2k and selling 8 to 10k?
If you are buying to resell make sure the horse is the right color, right breed, right height and has papers. I repeat, make sure it has papers.
Also how are your marketing skills? Can you take a great picture and make a killer sale video?
I won’t affect your Amateur status under current rules.
I have done it three times, and I keep my horses at home, so no board bills. I never made any profit when I considered expenses, but I did sell two of them for considerably more than I paid for them (paid around $2000 as weanling- 2 year old, sold around $10-15,000 as 5-7 year olds), but the first one I was unable to sell (though I did lease him out for a few years), and had him until he died at age 36.
If you want to slightly subsidize the cost of riding a second horse, it is plausible, but don’t expect to make an actual profit.
I am an amateur and I almost solely do sales/resales to finance my hobby. I usually have one or two OTTB at any given moment and two warmblood imports.
I was starting to do some tax stuff last night and I made a small profit this year. That’s even after board and training (I live in a high COL area, too), shows, vet bills, etc., so I’m always surprised when people say “don’t expect to make a profit.” Of course you can make a profit if you are a) smart about what you buy, and b) commit yourself to following through with actually selling the horse quickly. The people who lose money commit themselves to hanging onto horses for X period and then something happens. Mine are for sale almost as soon as they come into my possession. I get that’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I find it really fulfilling personally and am proud of being able to sell both ammy-friendly TBs and fancy warmbloods, across a wide range of price-points - my cheapest of the four I sold this year was $11k and the most expensive was in the high five figures.
If you have a good eye and are comfortable, I’d recommend starting with TBs off the track. The market is hot right now that if you can pick something up for $1-2k, you can stand to make $10-15k in just a few months of good riding and care. My current TB was $3,500 and I have no doubt I could move her for $10-15k at the moment, but she is something special and I’m expecting her to be my RRP horse so she’ll stick around for a bit.
This is what I have been doing to get experience with different horses with the goal to move up in quality of my personal horse someday. It isn’t the easiest thing to do and depending on what you can get for working extra hours at your regular job it may be more productive to work extra hours there if possible. The hours you will invest in marketing/replying to any inquiry about the sales horse plus meeting prospective buyers also really cuts into your life. Now you are talking about developing horses farther than I currently can so your end dollar will be much higher than mine. Current market is killer to buy projects for developing but great to sell your polished ones. My husband keeps warning me I don’t want to get stuck with a project that may tank in “value” if the market and enonomy in general crash.
My own experience with this was positive. I usualy had one, sometimes two, project horses that I was making up for resale, and I did make money over the long haul. Not a lot, but enough to pay expenses and buy the next one.
The key for me was having an inexpensive place to keep them and to not pay full board. That way, if they needed another month or two to polish, the profit equation didn’t change signifigantly. The other piece was that I needed to be in a situation where I could put mileage on them easily and cheaply.
This worked best when I had a busy boarding/training lesson barn. I could always hack the project horse in the ring with the boarders, throw it on the empty spot in the trailer or grab a lesson kid to set fences for a few minutes. I could also put the good lesson kids or adults on it to see how well it tolerated a non-pro ride.
If you have to schedule a schooling opportunity, and hook up the trailer to take the horse there, finishing the horse becomes more difficult and more expensive.
Again, for me, the sweet spot was to buy something in the $1 - 3K range, and plan on selling in 6 - 9 months for $6 - $12. With that math, if they needed extra time, I wasn’t losing my shirt.
Pay attention to soundness, size and temperment (ammy friendly temperment is a MUST) first when looking at prospects. Also take a look at your local market and see what people need and what’s selling.
I have my first little sales project now and am having a good time. I found inexpensive board at a pretty busy barn with an adjacent trail system, so he gets exposed to a lot and I can take my time bringing him along without feeling like an extra few months of board will make or break me. I’m doing the same thing as @McGurk in terms of price range - buying very low fours and aiming to sell for mid/high fours as a lower level all-around type within 6 to 8 months.
Definitely get it insured (ASPCA is good for the inexpensive horses, no need to prove value, I have pretty robust coverage and it’s $70/mo), have a strong local network/rolodex for help and problem solving, and have a solid plan A and plan B if you find you can’t sell it after all.
I’ve flipped a couple of horses that I bought as “projects”. I don’t think I made any money, although I did carefully consider that what I bought needed to fit the market I was trying to sell into. I ended up keeping both longer than was probably reasonable to expect a profit, but I was largely doing it for the experience and because I can. I keep my horses at home, and having a second to ride filled a need for me.
I’m in the middle of my second REAL project and I can already tell I’ll won’t make much money for a variety of reasons. I do disagree with Tha_Ridge about OTTBs, however, if you’re planning to sell into the dressage market.
I’m in the center of Horse Country in Virginia. You can hardly give away a good TB as a dressage horse here. If someone will pay you $15K for one, it had better have good clean changes and a show record at 3rd Level. And I say this as someone who quite likes OTTBs. I think they can be great horses, but they’re just hard to sell for dressage. Now, the eventing and jumping markets are a TOTALLY different story.
I’ll also recommend that you get horses you like personally. I had one who was fine. I made a small profit. But we never clicked and I never really liked him. It made it hard to want to go to the barn and see him every day.
And finally, be prepared to deal with incredibly bad riding buyers. I marketed my last horse as “best for an intermediate rider” and I was VERY up front with people about the fact that he was still green. A good egg for sure, but needed someone who could be at least a little confident for him. At the very least, you needed to be able to apply a rudimentary half halt.
What I got in people coming to see him were largely very, very beginner riders. One woman, when she asked him to canter, and he picked up a lovely, forward canter, started screaming at me to “MAKE HIM STOP!” I told her she needed to sit down and pull on the reins and he would. Five circles later (with her screaming most of the time) he finally came to a bewildered stop. Anyway, the selling part kinda sucks.
Yes, I’d imagine dressage is a tough sell for them, sadly. I’m in the northeast in a Hunter/Jumper barn and my TBs typically sell to amateurs/juniors who are primarily local H/J riders who maybe want something they can hunter pace on occasionally or take to local rated or unrated shows and have been priced out of the market for “true” Hunter/Jumper show horses ($30k+ around here). Mine sell like hotcakes to this clientele.
Second ASPCA for insurance - although $70 seems high. I pay ~$36-37/month for my coverage and then keep mortality elsewhere for the more expensive horses.
OMG, YES! If you are selling anything that is not super expensive but is kind of green, be prepared. The people that will come out of the woodwork are terrifying. My very fancy 4-year-old TB mare was tried by a very sweet but very beginner 11-year-old who came with her mom, no trainer. Bless that mare.
A friend of mine has had good luck flipping ponies the last couple years. She’s 30ish and small so she fits a pony, but has the experience to really school them. So compared to other ponies that are mostly being brought along by older juniors, her ponies advance from greenbroke to jumping courses with changes quickly.
And like someone else said, they’re for sale immediately by word of mouth. They get listed everywhere after a couple months.
Horses are a little more tricky. There are lots of people out there trying to sell horses of all ages and prices. Harder to have a niche. But if you’re doing it to learn and have fun than that doesn’t matter as much.
About half of the time… depending on my mood and how stingy I’m feeling with money. When I do do ones, it’s pretty basic - vitals, flexions, neuro exam, etc. I don’t X-ray anything in the low 4s, and personally, I think that helps from a resale perspective because I can honestly tell prospective buyers that the horse vetted clean on a basic exam to do the job I ask (I tell vets 3’ hunter/jumper prospect) and I really don’t know what X-rays will or will not show.
On project horses for resale, you need to always have a vet check done.
You don’t want surprises when ready to sell and a vet check finds something you didn’t know was there when you bought the horse, that now will make selling it hard.
For some that I get off the track, trainers can’t or won’t hold for PPE. Why would they if they know they’ll have five other buyers come along with cash in hand? If I like the horse enough, I chance it, but I’m also confident enough in today’s market that I could resell them for at least what I paid if it came down to it. It’s a risk, but so is selling horses in the first place.
For me: it depends. On the asking price, on how much work the horse has done, if there are any obvious conformational issues and how much potential I think the horse had.
For instance, if I was picking something up out of a backyard or unbroken for low $$ and was going to to flip it fairly quickly for a local horse, probably not. If I thought it had potential to do more and was going to keep it longer, probably. North of $10 - $12K buyers tend to expect a more comprehensive health record.
When I do do ones, it’s pretty basic - vitals, flexions, neuro exam, etc. I don’t X-ray anything in the low 4s, and personally, I think that helps from a resale perspective because I can honestly tell prospective buyers that the horse vetted clean on a basic exam to do the job I ask (I tell vets 3’ hunter/jumper prospect) and I really don’t know what X-rays will or will not show.