OPINIONS WANTED: Thoughts on horse selling and leasing simultaneously?

General Questions
1

As horse owners, do you want to be able to sell a horse while it’s being leased?

As horse buyers, would you mind if a horse you bought were being leased? (Fair warning - I think I can set it up so that if the lease gets cancelled and a refund is given, it would be the original owner who gives the refund, not you as the new owner. Can’t guarantee, though, as I haven’t written this code yet in the beta.)

As horse leasers, would you mind if the horse you’re leasing got a new owner during the lease?

Inquiring minds (this one, at least :wink:) want to know.

2

As an owner, I wouldn’t want to (knowingly) buy a horse from one Stable that is currently being leased to another.

Surely the best way to do it would be for the selling stable to early-terminate the Lease before selling the horse. If the stable leasing the horse still wants to lease it, they could try and come to an arrangement with the new owner.

3

Totally agree with Lewis

4

That covers one viewpoint in regards to question 2.

What about questions 1 and 3? (And anyone else can weigh in on question 2 as well.)

5

I don’t lease but I think it is fine to sell while leasing, but there should be a termination agreement of some sort first and/or a provision to continue the lease (which I think is pointless as the new owner would want to do whatever with the horse - hence the purchase)

6

I doubt that I will be leasing any Starfish horses in the future. If I am not interested in racing/breeding them, I will sell them outright. That said, if I was an owner who was leasing horses, I would ask the person leasing the horse if they were interested in buying it outright and, if not, I would wait until the lease was over before putting the horse up for sale.

I think that I would mind. If my lease arrangement was with one owner, I would be pretty upset if they sold it to another owner in the middle of the lease period. If they wanted/needed to sell the horse, I would appreciate being given first refusal to buy it outright, otherwise I would expect them to early-terminate the lease before selling it.

All-in-all, I don’t think that an owner should be allowed to sell a horse that is being leased to another stable without first offering the leasing stable first refusal to buy it outright, and, if that didn’t work out, offering them early-termination of the lease.

7

I think as a leasee, I probably wouldn’t mind the new owner, but as a new owner I would mind buying a leased horse even if it meant I got a new revenue stream from the lease.

As a horse owner who has leased ponies, owning/leasing a horse doesn’t make all that difference to me unless it’s around tax time. My primary concern is getting leased ponies back from idle stables who have not yet been deleted.

Would it be possible to put in a clause that if the leasee doesn’t log in for X amount of weeks then it can be canceled upon the owner’s request?

8

I am currently leasing a horse that got sold in an auction, didn’t bother me either way as nothing changed. I don’t really care for first refusal, I just wanted one foal from her and not have to worry about her ever again.

A couple of race horses I have leased and really liked have inquired about buying, I have been turned down a few times and will be buying one soon. If the owner wants to sell its up to them to who or when.

I personally would not want to buy a race horse being leased because I would want it right away to race it my way. I wouldn’t mind with a broodmare because you can only use them once a year anyway.

9

My fear with being able to sell a leased horse would be the possibility of someone trying to earn double money off of a horse - lease it out for a year for $X, then turn around and sell the horse for $Y.

As pointed out, for me, this is less of an issue with broodmares as with racing stock.  Since racing stock has limited times for peak usage (racing), and it takes a while to figure some ponies out, I would be irritated if I bought a horse and could not run it, especially if the leaser were to go inactive/stop running that horse.

However, if there was a way to make the lease information more prominent - even something as simple as making it bold or red font on the horse’s page when the horse is up for sale, I think that would help my peace of mind.  After all, if you knowingly read that the horse is on lease until X day, you can make an informed decision (.  Sure, in a perfect world, that information is there and I would always take plenty of time to notice it.  Unfortunately, my powers of observation are not always acute.  ::)  There are scenarios where purchasing a racehorse that was out on lease would not bother me (right price, lease is about to expire, horse is SUPERAWESOMEAMAZING, I estimate that the horse isn’t near it’s peak age anyway based on siblings, etc.) 
ETA: A better way to notify the buyer of the lease?  On the page where it confirms that you want to “buy the horse for $X” and makes you confirm, you could have a simple “*This horse is leased to Jane Doe Farms until MM/DD/YY”.

As a leaser, there are no scenarios where I would be bothered if the horse were sold, as it does not affect the lease.  I don’t expect anyone to sell me a horse just because I leased it from them, though that scenario is always nice (especially if the horse runs well).  Though I might be a little offended to not get notified of the option to buy (assuming I had kept the horse active), I know I could always try to start negotiations with the new owner…

Also, instead of the option to cancel the lease if the leaser goes inactive for X days, maybe it could be a scenario based on # of days without running in a race, maybe 60 days or so.  That count would of course have to be reset after injuries.  I’ve just seen horses go to active homes, then just sit idle, despite regular log ins.  I’m sure that’s frustrating to the owner…

10

That’s something I already planned for the beta, unless I go with the other option suggested by Lewis et. al (force the lease to be cancelled before the horse is eligible for sale).

Having an option to force-cancel a lease (by the owner) if the leaser is MIA makes sense. (How long counts as “MIA” would probably be defined for each lease, so that it’s known up-front.)

Enforcing the owner’s idea of how often the horse should be raced while on lease, though, seems a bit off to me. What if it’s a stakes horse and the leaser is trying to save up money to enter him into that fancy Grade 1 next month? Or what if it’s an inconsistent/crap baby and the leaser can’t afford to throw away money on entry fees, so they’re waiting for it to mature? What if the horse hasn’t been home in a year and the leaser’s giving it 3 months off at the farm to rest? There are probably more “valid” scenarios for a horse being “inactive” for 60+ (or whatever) days, and because they’d all be so subjective it seems a bit mean for the owner to just yank the horse away. IMO, if you’re leasing a horse, you’re handing over all control of it for that period of time. There are obvious restrictions on leases (can’t enter into claimers, can’t retire, can’t geld), but beyond that - if you’re not happy with a leaser doing anything else with the pony (including running it injured/tired, not running it at all, etc) then you shouldn’t lease it out.