Wanted Ads - getting lots of horses well over my budget

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silverstar

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and its annoying. Has anyone bought a horse from a wanted ad? Just wondering if I should change it slightly and put pls do not ring if your horse is over xxx amount.
 
I have a wanted ad running at the moment and have had some excellent and not so excellent leads and replies. I'm seeing two horse next weekend neither of which and on the open market and both sound cracking. So it has certainly worked for me so far :)
 
A safe sane, 16.1-16.3, allrounder that jumps to do a bit of rc sj with, budget up to 3.5k & Im based near Chester.

Hostess - have you stated your budget on the ad? One of the reasons Ive done a wanted ad was like you say, hopefully they havent advertised the horse elsewhere yet.
 
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I had similar, I posted that I wanted a New FOrest or New forest part bred and had people email about all sorts of breed of horse! I also said something that was broken and established with the basics and had lots of unbroken babies offered! It's annoying isn't it, because you get all excited when you see a response and then it's instantly not suitable. Try putting a budget in your advert - it might help.
 
Balexis said:
I had similar, I posted that I wanted a New FOrest or New forest part bred and had people email about all sorts of breed of horse! I also said something that was broken and established with the basics and had lots of unbroken babies offered! It's annoying isn't it, because you get all excited when you see a response and then it's instantly not suitable. Try putting a budget in your advert - it might help.
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Same! I wanted a nice 16hh(ish) all rounder....and all I got was little showjumping ponies, or a 20 year old unbroken TB!! I did get some ok ones contact me, but nothing I wanted to follow up.

OP: The only problem I had with stating what my budget was...some people will be cheeky with it. Say in the summer I saw a certain horse advertised for 2.5k....a couple of months later when it hasn't sold and the owners see my wanted advert with a budget of 3.5k, all of a sudden their horse is worth 3.5k. Luckily I had a pretty good memory!!
 
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Umbongo - I might leave my budget off then.

Ive had a response from Ireland. Oh yeah I stated that I could travel there in my ad (not).

Misstyc - Its on Horsequest.
 
I put a wanted ad on a few weeks ago now and had roughly 50 replies.

Despite clearly stating horse must be between 16 and 16.3 aged 4 or 5 and no dealers/ex racers I reckon 75% of my replies were outside height/age or from dealers (some who openly admitted it and some who sent the longest e mail in the world about their precious horse they would never sell but had fallen on hard times and wanted a nice home etc - and when I say long I mean 2 a4 pages of said story - only to see ad the day after I said not for me - complete with link to dealers site!).

I have only been to see 1 horse off the back of my wanted ad and in fairness it was very nice and probably the closest I have come to finding the one for me so far.
 
I had a wanted ad on Horsequest too (didn't state my budget) and had lots of replies, some from adverts that I'd already seen and some from horses that weren't on the market yet, some that were older than stated or smaller than I wanted. I learnt that right from the outset I had to say I wasn't interested before they gave me the heavy sell.

I ended up buying one that replied and have to admit he's been my best purchase ever. His previous owner was pregnant and she was looking at the adverts for sale to get an idea of price she should be asking and came across mine and rang me (thank goodness she did!)

I also got a person who was selling a horse that she told numerous lies about, it was only because I used a buying agent (worth her weight in gold) who was very thorough in her investigations that we found out that the horse wasn't what she said and there was a good reason for her not wanting to advertise her horse.

I guess with everything, it's buyer beware but be careful as some unscrupulous people may be trying to offload something they don't want advertised.
 
stating your budget can lead to you being offered horses at inflated prices, by which I mean they would have happily sold to you for £1,000 until they saw you were prepared to spend more. So maybe it would be better to put "realistic/sensible budget" rather than a specific amount. It might also be worthwhile replying to those who have offered you expensive horses to explain that they are over your budget, and tell them how much you have to spend - you never know, they might be prepared to sell for a lower price... It depends how much they like you when they meet you a lot of the time.

I got a fabulous mare from a wanted ad, again not actually up for sale, and I was offered a couple more like that too. But there was a lot of completely unsuitable stuff offered as well, such as just backed 3 year olds when I was after a confidence giver (as in restore lost confidence) for a 12 year old...
 
Ultimately what you are looking for is the perfect horse to suit you within your budget - does it have to be a bargain as well?

I think as long as you are happy with horse and you can afford to buy it does it matter if the owner would have sold it for less or if it was advertised for more and you get it for less due to the wanted advert?

I think you need to put some guideline for price possibly a little less than you are willing to pay so there is some room for negotiation if someone replies to you ad with a horse a little over your guidance price. If you don't put a price then you are going to get people reply with horse that fulfill your requirements that cost more than you can afford which is wasting the time of the person replying and your time too.

I did put up a wanted ad when I was looking over three years ago but in the end i found one myself - i did have quite a few replies but did not go to see any of them in the end as ended up getting a new forest instead of a connemara!
 
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