CTC is selling up and living on land...

[Mike Todd]

On 26/03/2022 at 10:01, PD1964 said:

The couple I feel for, are the buyers of “Silver Fox” a basic boat bought for £60K, if not more over price. If I ever pass them on the system I would just think “Mugs”   
  At least CTC’s boat was priced according to the current market through a Broker, but like all the Vloggers boats nothing special, no wow factor, that would only be for their dedicated followers.

Silver Fox appears to have ben priced at the market value as it sold pretty quickly, assuming they paid at or around the asking price.

8 hours ago, Stroudwater1 said:

Any boat thats decent liveable on run of the mill and priced at £45-£60k seems to sell rapidly. CTCs falls into that

 

As others mention CTC in fairness could have done a silver fox but did the decent thing, selling back via the broker he bought from for a fair price.

CTC never bigged the name of his boat up either which is a bonus for the new owners. Silver foxes new owners wont have an easy time I fear!  

 

 

How do you define 'fair price'?

[frangar]

2 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Silver Fox appears to have ben priced at the market value as it sold pretty quickly, assuming they paid at or around the asking price.

How do you define 'fair price'?

I think it sold to a believer.....who had never had a boat before.....so was rather brainwashed....therefore market value was irrelevant....rather like those who pay over the odds for a classic car just because some so called "famous" person once owned it.....sadly there are lot of people that fall for such rubbish.

[Stroudwater1]

 

3 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Silver Fox appears to have ben priced at the market value as it sold pretty quickly, assuming they paid at or around the asking price.

How do you define 'fair price'?

The sort of price that his (CTC) narrowboat was listed for and is under offer for. Theres many similar that get listed for that sort of price, its not an unusual boat, has been well looked after. Theres many of this type for sale, all get snapped up fast.

 

I imagine he could have asked for £30k more and sold as "The famous CTC boat". Silver fox sold for far more than usual boats of that style and age sell for. 

 

 

[booke23]

26 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Silver Fox appears to have ben priced at the market value as it sold pretty quickly.

 

Ah but it didn't go on the open market. They set up their own website to showcase the boat and advertised the sale to their followers on YT. Hence they were able to achieve an inflated price by selling to a naive audience. 

[PD1964]

6 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

Silver Fox appears to have ben priced at the market value as it sold pretty quickly, assuming they paid at or around the asking price.

How do you define 'fair price'?

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Your a clueless joke if you think that. You have always defended the Foxes, did you believe they were ever going to buy a new boat? 
Why did they not use a Broker?

 

 Fool @Mike Todd, 😂 just seen the above comments, after I put this on and they all seam to sing off my hymn sheet not yours.

 

  Can I ask @Mike Todd   Why was Bickerstaffe Boats asking for freebies to build a boat for the Foxes including the shell off various people, after the “Foxes” said the base plate had been laid down and they were going to see the work in progress on their Vlog?

  Did you ever see any work on their new boat @Mike Todd on their Vlogs?

 Answer: NO😂

  

Edited March 28, 2022 by PD1964

[Norm55]

Buying a boat off a vlogger has its advantages.  You can trawl through hours of vlogs to see its history and any major problems it may have had.   Foxes were always vague about their new boat but as i said previously i have not followed them.  I do find them false and irritating. What was their motive for misleading everyone ? 

Perhaps if Elton Moss have taken over Bickerstaffe then they have been told to go away?

[Paul Charlton]

And you'd find out the CTC had not blacked the bottom of his boat since he bought it!

 

.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Paul Charlton said:

And you'd find out the CTC had not blacked the bottom of his boat since he bought it!

 

.

 

Hardly unusual.

[Idle Days]

Lazy Days aka Narrowboat Experience Vlogers are also selling and moving ashore.

[Guest]

It does seem like the canal video blogging bubble has burst.

 

Some of the newer ones are simply unwatchable.

[Thomas C King]

5 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

It does seem like the canal video blogging bubble has burst.

 

Some of the newer ones are simply unwatchable.

 

It's because people are encouraging them. People think presenting is easy, but it's not.

 

Then again, the thousands of viewers for some of these channels suggest I am wrong. Even when they are just speaking in a monotonous voice at the camera for thirty minutes (not an exaggeration) about how some other boater annoyed them or told them off.

[Mike Todd]

16 hours ago, booke23 said:

 

Ah but it didn't go on the open market. They set up their own website to showcase the boat and advertised the sale to their followers on YT. Hence they were able to achieve an inflated price by selling to a naive audience. 

You seem to misunderstand the meaning of 'open market' (unless you can show that I am). They offered the boat for sale without restriction (apart from price) so that anyone could offer to buy it. There is no monopolistic selling channel so they chose the one that they believed would maximise their return - unless you are altruistic that is what anyone would seek to do.

 

To suggest that by advertising on YouTube is to seek a naïve buyer is perhaps an insult to the eventual buyer that is worthy of an Oscar.

[PD1964]

3 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

 

To suggest that by advertising on YouTube is to seek a naïve buyer is perhaps an insult to the eventual buyer that is worthy of an Oscar.

Yes a naive buyer who believed the Bull that they were buying a new boat like yourself. 
  Did they actually visit the boat before  putting an offer in and buying it? I doubt it as they were in Chicago, the believable honest Foxes certainly new what they were doing milking their followers😂

[David Mack]

22 minutes ago, Thomas C King said:

People think presenting is easy, but it's not.

Well my problem with a lot of these vloggers ( on canal and non-canal subjects), is not that they can't present. Many of them are likeable people who are obviously confident in front of the camera. No the skill they lack is that of editing - cutting out all the waffle and repetition, and using the dialogue to camera to concisely frame the other content. Lots of half hour videos would be much better if reduced to 10 minutes!

[Mike Todd]

11 hours ago, PD1964 said:

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Your a clueless joke if you think that. You have always defended the Foxes, did you believe they were ever going to buy a new boat? 
Why did they not use a Broker?

 

 Fool @Mike Todd, 😂 just seen the above comments, after I put this on and they all seam to sing off my hymn sheet not yours.

 

  Can I ask @Mike Todd   Why was Bickerstaffe Boats asking for freebies to build a boat for the Foxes including the shell off various people, after the “Foxes” said the base plate had been laid down and they were going to see the work in progress on their Vlog?

  Did you ever see any work on their new boat @Mike Todd on their Vlogs?

 Answer: NO😂

  

Your evident antipathy for the former owners of Silver Fox leads to some bizarre comments - I did not think that anything in that post of mine was an attempt at humour, clueless or otherwise. 

 

Clearly they believed, as have others before them (some on this forum), that they did not need to use the services of a broker and, luckily for them, the outcome appears to prove them right. Equally, there have been others whose who have testified to the benefits of using a broker that generally do not much relate to getting a higher price. Selling is not an activity that everyone is comfortable doing (it does take a thick skin!) A broker charges a fee and they will only make a living at it if they offer a service that sellers find justifies that cost. It seems to me to be discourteous to label those who sell without a broker as somehow money grabbing.

 

I really don't understand the sentence that begins "Fool . . . ". In general I am not seeking to sing off anyone's hymn sheet, yours, mine or anyone else's - I simply respond to the content of posts although I am perhaps more easily drawn to counter comments that appear to arise from factors other than in the main matter.

 

However, one of my long standing beefs is with people who appear to misunderstand the nature of 'market forces' (or equivalent terms). On the one hand, Thatcherites espoused a notion that exaggerated the role of free trade and sought to remove any constraints that brought social issues into trading, especially when that involved parties with unequal power. On the other hand, there are those who think that someone owes them more than they are entitled to and complain when they are unable to purchase what they desire. Short of having a full blown Marxist economy in which freedom of choice is eliminated, there will always be limits to what each of us can afford. I cannot see any way in which the trade in canal boats is other that an open market in which price is solely determined by what a willing buyer will pay (and we are not required to enquire into their reasons, not those of the seller who accepts the offer) 

 

Of course, there is a growing number of people using the canals, and boats thereon, as a place of residence, something that the system was not designed for. If that usage becomes dominant and is accepted by society as a whole as a legitimate purpose, then there may be a case - as once with rents - for a regulated market but until then, as with bricks and mortar, it is a market without price regulation.

 

I am sorry that I cannot answer your questions about the relationship between Bickerstaffe and Foxes Afloat - I know neither and, as far as I can tell, neither has said anything about the confidential aspects of the once proposed commercial transaction. Speculation such as you indicate is likely to be not only baseless but also potentially hurtful to those involved. What is clear is that a well-established couple have re-evaluated their lifestyle aspirations and have changed course quite dramatically. They obviously, from what they have shared with us, have the means of doing that - one of the sadnesses of our society is that there are too many people who do not have that luxury (or anything like it)

[Mike Todd]

18 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Yes a naive buyer who believed the Bull that they were buying a new boat like yourself. 
  Did they actually visit the boat before  putting an offer in and buying it? I doubt it as they were in Chicago, the believable honest Foxes certainly new what they were doing milking their followers😂

Reports in the past small number of years seem to suggest that there has been quite a rise in buying 'off plan'. It may reflect a seller's market (ie greater demand than supply) but also perhaps that during the pandemic most of us have turned to doing that for much of life. We joined the club of people who bought a house that was not yet built.

 

I am struggling to see why such a trading behaviour makes it naive. The state of our high streets suggests a rapid decline in see-before-buy.

[Thomas C King]

10 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I am struggling to see why such a trading behaviour makes it naive. The state of our high streets suggests a rapid decline in see-before-buy.

 

I don't think there is much point engaging. From prior posts PD seems to have a serious dislike of YouTube bloggers (perhaps with a few exceptions). To the extent that they have been blocked from commenting on their videos (or their comments have been deleted, I forget which).

[booke23]

32 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

You seem to misunderstand the meaning of 'open market' (unless you can show that I am). They offered the boat for sale without restriction

 

Really? Well in any case this argument was done to death in the thread below when it went up for sale, no point in a re-run. I do think you could be whistling in the wind on this one though. 

 

 

 

[David Mack]

45 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I cannot see any way in which the trade in canal boats is other that an open market in which price is solely determined by what a willing buyer will pay (and we are not required to enquire into their reasons, not those of the seller who accepts the offer) 

But a perfect market, as espoused by theoretical economists, only works where all parties concerned have a complete knowledge of the relevant market factors. And the suggestion in the case of the Foxes boat is that it was sold to someone whose knowledge of boat values was not informed by an understanding of the wider market, and consequently they overpaid. Whether they are simply gullible, or whether they really believe that the Foxes' fame(?) adds to the boat's intrinsic value is not for me to say.

[frangar]

54 minutes ago, Thomas C King said:

 

I don't think there is much point engaging. From prior posts PD seems to have a serious dislike of YouTube bloggers (perhaps with a few exceptions). To the extent that they have been blocked from commenting on their videos (or their comments have been deleted, I forget which).

He’s far from alone in his opinion! 

[PD1964]

1 hour ago, Thomas C King said:

 

I don't think there is much point engaging. From prior posts PD seems to have a serious dislike of YouTube bloggers (perhaps with a few exceptions). To the extent that they have been blocked from commenting on their videos (or their comments have been deleted, I forget which).

  I don’t have a serious dislike for Vloggers but I could see right through the “New Boat” click bait the Foxes led their Merry followers on for the last couple of years and I questioned them on this and was blocked for asking basic questions nothing offensive.

  

[robtheplod]

.... and another one.....

 

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

This vlogging is a great outlet for those who have a lot to say about themselves.

 

 

[Tony1]

1 hour ago, robtheplod said:

.... and another one.....

 

 

 

They're not packing in as such- they say they're going to publish vlogs on an ad-hoc sort of basis- when they feel they have something interesting to show, as opposed to their previous pattern of every week or two. 

Also, they say they're going to be semi-cruisers, so they'll be staying on the EA waters for the foreseeable future, in order to be close to their children and grandchildren. 

Certainly though, we'll be seeing rather less of them going forwards, but at least they're still living aboard. 

I've been getting a bit worried that with so many vloggers leaving their boats, maybe they know something I don't. 

If the day ever comes when full time living aboard is banned, there will be around 7,000 boats on the market almost overnight, which won't help anyone's boat values. 

Personally, I dont see it ever happening. The CRT facilities will always be needed anyway for the leisure/summer cruisers, so they can't be taken away.

CRT could maybe limit the number of days per year you were allowed on the cut, so they might consider introducing a rule that your boat was not permitted in its waters for more than say 60 days at a time.

But what if you couldn't find a marina to get into when your 60 days were up? 

It might make more sense to introduce a system like the one we now have to deal with when travelling long term in Europe- so you might get a maximum of 180 days per year on the cut?

Or maybe you would pay a bigger fee if you want to stay the whole 365 days on the cut.

Maybe all cruising would be banned between Nov and Feb?

I guess it depends what their objectives might be when/if new rules were introduced. Reduce water usage in lock flights, or wear and tear on gates? And then they'd have to balance any lost income against the reduced wear and tear.

Its hard to see how they would gain from any significant change to the rules, other than in places like London which have a very high boat density.

. 

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Tony1

[restlessnomad]

David's vlog introduced me to canal and he is the reason I joined this forum. I like his slow paced gentlemanly style, and it all looks so natural(like he is talking to me) because he is a pro. I understand vlogging is a way to make money to be able to afford a lifestyle some people want and I dont want to begrudge them.

I like the fact that there is democratisation in content creation, although it leads to sh*t tonnes of mediocre content. 

 

I have lost interest in narrow boat vlogs but that on me, not on vloggers.