equine agents/horse finders (also in CR)

[spacefaer]

I was just wondering in a spirit of idle curiosity- people who find horses on behalf of clients - how do they charge and what sort of cost does it involve?

Do they charge per horse seen? or get horses videoed? what sort of assessment do they make of the client's needs too?

I was chatting about it earlier today and couldn't come to a conclusion as to how it would work. (and how expensive it would be too lol!)

 

[crabbymare]

Depends on the agent and on the client.

I met an agent when I visited a friend in Germany For going out and looking for a very specific type of horse they have a day rate for test riding, getting the horses photographed and videoed for the prospective purchaser to look at before they make the trip.
I imagine they would need to get a good idea of the ability of the buyer otherwise they could not match the horse to the person properly.

I did not ask but would think you would be looking at a minimum of £150 a day (plus expenses if hotels are needed for overnights) for that sort of service, and that would include being collected from the airport and taken around to look at horses, so you would also save on car hire and fuel costs

 

[imr]

When I was looking I asked a friend of mine who I have trained with (and therefore knows how I ride) to look at a couple of things for me. She charged me similar to what she charged for coming with me and that was about 500 quid for a weekend with petrol extra, as that's similar to what she could make teaching. I would have thought that other trainers might be persuaded to do the same.

There is also a guy who sells his services as a finder of dressage horses (he advertises quite a bit) and I know he charges a commission on the sale (ie you pay about 7 per cent extra on the price to cover his commission). He asks what you want and then lines some up, but in my experience he doesn't often get you videos etc (imho useless as how can he even remember the horses plus I'm very capable of saying no having seen a video and not wasting time getting on a plane) and just wants to get you to germany/holland and see some horses, nor does he ask to see a video of you riding etc. So, nice work if you can get it but I was not very impressed with the size of the fee versus the effort put in